


Show Girl

by biscuit_eater, rememberwhenyoutried



Category: Original Work
Genre: Crossdressing, F/M, Feminization, Slow Burn, Trans, Trans Character, Trans Female Character, Transgender
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-15
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-02-28 16:28:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 84,964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23150203
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/biscuit_eater/pseuds/biscuit_eater, https://archiveofourown.org/users/rememberwhenyoutried/pseuds/rememberwhenyoutried
Summary: When the last-minute trade show girls Alex booked to help show off his boss' exciting new project contract an even more last-minute illness, someone has to step in and fill their shoes. And it definitely isn't going to be Alex's boss.
Relationships: Original Character(s)/Original Character(s)
Comments: 58
Kudos: 105





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally decided to upload this on a new account, aiming to keep my fanfic and my original fic separate.
> 
> Two weeks later I decided that was a daft decision, so now it's on both accounts. So it doesn't have two authors; they're both just me.

I stared in disbelief at the email I had open on my computer. I was screwed. And that meant the whole company was screwed. 

“Mr Brewer,” the email read, “we are sorry to inform you that several of our girls have been caught ill, and thus we are unable to provide you with three staffers as contracted for the upcoming Consumer Electronics Expo. Only one, Emily Swan, is currently available. Please confirm that you still require her services. We will, of course, be invoicing for only a single staffer. We would also remind you that our girls require regular breaks and thus suggest that if you do decide to go ahead with our contract you find her at least one other girl as backup. Regards, Frank Hammond.” 

“Fuck,” I said to myself, re-reading it to make absolutely sure it said what I thought it said. Only one girl for CEE. And almost no chance of acquiring anyone else at this point: CEE was days away, and I’d found Hammond’s firm only the day before after several days’ panicked ringing around every pro modelling agency I could find. Hammond’s had been the sweet spot: the better firms we couldn’t afford, and the cheaper ones had been booked up for weeks. 

I’d have to tell James. 

James McCain was an old family friend. He’d offered me a job with his startup when no-one else would take a chance on a kid fresh out of school with no experience and thoroughly average grades. He was older than me, twenty-three to my nineteen, and in addition to having every physical attribute I wished for but didn’t have — he was tall and well-built; I was short and scrawny, and felt even more so every time I was in his presence — he was an engineering genius. 

I hated to let him down like this. 

Fortunately, the walk to his office was short enough that I didn’t have much time to worry. McCain Applied Computing had so few employees it didn’t make sense to lease a large amount of office space, especially because most of the other people we had worked remotely. Even I, who would probably have been considered James’ assistant if the company was formal enough to have real job titles, could have worked from home if I wanted to; most of what I did when I wasn’t organising the company was coding on one or other of James’ projects. But home was a tiny, lonely apartment. Even if the office was often only James and I and the occasional bike courier, at least there was another face to look at. 

His office door was open, as usual. I knocked anyway. 

“Alex?” he called from inside. “Is that you?” 

I poked my head around the door. James was at his desk, frowning at something on one of the monitors in front of him. I felt the usual stab of jealousy in my gut when I looked at him: he was handsome, tall, and the shape of his chest was just about visible through his t-shirt. I controlled the self-conscious reflex to put a hand on my own chest — flat, skinny, unmuscled — and focused instead on making it to one of his chairs without fainting. I was really quite worried at this point. 

“What’s up?” he said. “You look— well, you look terrified, frankly.” 

I found my voice. “I just heard from Frank Hammond.” His right eyebrow crinkled, the way it did when he was about to ask a question, so I preempted him: “Of Hammond’s, the booth babe agency.” None of the modelling agencies liked it when you called the girls ‘booth babes’, and I’m sure the girls in question felt the same, but a habit is a habit. “They’ve had some girls out sick, and reading between the lines it’s impacted more clients than just us. They can only offer us one girl for CEE.” 

James was quiet for a moment. 

“James?” I said, when he didn’t say anything. 

“I’m thinking,” he said. He didn’t sound angry or worried, which confused me. Booth babes were vitally important at trade shows for smaller companies — especially startups like ours — because a large stage and signage was expensive, and acquiring the floor space in which to put it all was even more so, but hiring a handful of girls and getting some eye-catching dresses made in the company colours with logos on the chest was comparatively cheap, and about as good when it came to attracting attention. Maybe in the future, when more of the attendees were women, it would be different, but people have been saying that for decades and it hasn’t come true yet. As James’ dad, who made his insufferable presence known every so often when he wanted to remind James who had given him the loan to start the company in the first place, had said, “Technology is a sexist business, and the way to sell in a sexist business ist with sex!” 

The expectant pause afterwards where we were supposed to laugh was the worst part. 

This week’s Consumer Electronics Expo was probably make-or-break for MCAC. We had a revolutionary product — a software solution to the hardware problem of putting a good-quality selfie camera behind a phone display, without resorting to punching unsightly holes through the screen — but the window we had to sell it in was unpredictable. All we knew was, if we couldn’t at least make a start on getting some contracts at CEE then by the time the next trade show rolled around, someone else might have solved the same problem. We had other solutions to other problems in the works — James, like I said, is a genius — but nothing ready to show. 

It was only a week since we got it working at all. James and I had worked day and night at the office for months, with remote assistance from some of the other coders, and hadn’t even had time to celebrate once we knew we’d cracked it: James threw himself instantly into courting the big manufacturers, and I threw myself into the logistics of finding space at CEE on such short notice, and booth babes to put in that space. 

I was quietly proud of our software solution. None of it was my idea, and I mostly just followed James’ lead, but since I’m a self-taught coder and he had an expensive education I’m just glad I was able to keep up. 

“Hammond says the girls need regular breaks,” I said, “so just one isn’t enough to cover a booth full-time.” 

James nodded. “Can I see the email, please?” he said. 

I rooted my phone out of my pocket, unlocked it, and handed it over. He scanned the email quickly. 

“Are these all the emails you’ve exchanged with this Hammond guy?” he asked, holding the phone out where we could both see it and scrolling through the message history. 

“Yeah,” I confirmed. “The initial contact was just yesterday.” 

“Okay,” he said. “I’ve got an idea. I’m going to forward myself these messages and reply to Hammond personally. We’re going to use this Emily Swan he’s offering us and I think I know where we can find another. You think two girls will be enough?” 

“We only had three booked, anyway. It means one of them will have to man the booth while the other’s taking a break, but it should work, particularly with you and me and some of the engineers around to offer support and talk tech.” 

He smiled and gave me back my phone. “Good. Go and finish all the other preparations for Friday, and assume we’ll have two girls. When are the dresses getting here?” 

“They haven’t finalised them yet. We’ll have them Friday morning, assuming we pass on measurements tonight.” 

“Okay, good,” he said. “Now go organise!” He shooed me out of the door, picking up his phone with his other hand. The last thing I heard from him was, “Ben, hi. I need a _big_ favour…” before I rounded the corner and the rest of his conversation was drowned out by the noise from the street outside. 

It was an hour or so later and I was thinking about grabbing some lunch, so I headed to James’ office to ask him if he wanted me to pick something up for him and his visitor. The visitor had arrived trailing what looked like luggage behind him and had introduced himself only as Ben. He offered no surname or any explanation as to why James had called him, and strutted off around the corner to James’ office without even asking for directions. I could practically see the gay surrounding him like a cloud, and I wondered where James knew him from. 

I knocked on the closed office door, and James immediately called for me to come in. 

“I was just going to get some lunch—” I started, but he interrupted me. 

“Alex!” James said. He sounded happy; I assumed Ben had found him a spare booth babe. “This is Ben, my roommate from university. Ben, Alex.” 

“Delighted,” Ben said. 

“Alex,” James said, sounding a little more serious. “Shut the door and come sit down. I have a proposal for you. A business proposition.” 

Confused, but compliant, I did as he asked. I could feel Ben watching me as I did so, and wondered again what his surname was. An uncharitable part of my brain decided it was ‘Dover’ and I resolved to give whatever part of my head thought that was funny a good kick when I had some spare time. I’d been bullied some at school for being gay, even though I wasn’t, and it had left me with a tendency towards defensive homophobia that I despised in myself. 

“What kind of proposition?” I asked, when I was good and uncomfortable with the attention they were both paying me. I liked it from James, but having strangers regard me so intensely was unsettling. 

An awkward look crossed James’ face. “I had a quick skim through your contacts for booth babes — trade show models, sorry —” he corrected himself with a grin, “and couldn’t find anyone who still had availability. You were very thorough.” 

“Thanks,” I said, feeling a little warm. I admired James, so compliments from him were always welcome, however readily and often he offered them to me. Then I finally processed the implications behind what he had said, and I frowned. “Does that mean we _don’t_ have a second model, then?” 

“That,” James said, “is the question before the court.” 

I was confused, and said so. 

“Ben here is an exceptional drag queen—” 

“Performance artist in the medium of drag,” Ben interrupted, but he shared a smile with James, as if it was an in-joke. I could almost hear the extra _e_ in ‘artist’. And then, once again processing people’s words several seconds after they said them, I realised what James was getting at. 

“You want to use a drag queen?” I blurted out, unable to stop myself. 

They were both silent for a moment. I looked Ben over. He was attractive, no doubt about it, and probably made for a great drag queen. But with his deep voice and carefully-trimmed beard I thought he would probably make a statement louder than our product. 

“Not me, darling,” Ben said, derailing my train of thought. “James here wants to use _you_.” 

My train of thought stood no chance of getting back on the tracks. I don’t know what my face looked like at that moment, but I know my mouth dropped open like I was a dead fish and I’m sure my eyes were doing something entertaining as well. 

“Sorry, Alex,” James said, frowning at his friend. “I was trying to broach the subject more delicately.” 

“You were dawdling, is what you were doing,” Ben said. 

I remained silent. 

“Look, the thing is, you’d be doing me — the company — a tremendous favour, and you’d be paid the modelling fee, so this’d be extra, on top of your usual salary. It’s not a bad sum, especially since _you_ don’t have to give any of it to an agent or manager like poor—” he glanced at a monitor for a reminder, “—Emily Swan does.” 

I remained silent. 

“I’m not asking you this as your boss, Alex,” James said, “or even as your friend. Or maybe I’m asking you this as both?” He shrugged. “The fact is, this trade show is _everything_ to us, as you know, and we need it to go perfectly. And I know from interning that if your startup doesn’t have _some_ way to bring people in, your startup will vanish from view amid all the other startups in your tiny corner of the trade show. And I _also_ know from interning that nothing gets attention like beautiful girls showing off your product. Girls plural, not just one who can only talk to one person at a time, and has to leave the stand empty when she needs a bathroom break.” 

I remained silent. James would, later, neither confirm nor deny that steam started coming out of my ears at this point. 

“And you’d be _more_ than just some agency worker we hired in for the day!” James said, warming to his pitch. “You know the product better than anyone else except me. And you know what else we’re working on, too. If a potential buyer talks to you, you can sell him on not just the product but the whole company!” 

“But—!” I said, and then went silent again for a moment as I tried to put together enough coherent thoughts to form a few sentences. “I don’t understand why you’re asking this. I don’t know why one girl and one drag queen is your solution, I don’t know why you think _I’d_ make a good drag queen, and I don’t know why you think potential customers — who, if they are the sort of people who like _booth babes_ at all —” I emphasised the words derisively, “would relate just as well to a drag queen as they would to a model, no matter how knowledgeable he is!” 

I managed, just about, not to shout at my boss, long-time friend, and saviour. And his drag queen pal. 

The drag queen pal burst out laughing. 

“Hey!” I said, offended. 

“I’m sorry,” Ben said, “but you have grasped the _exact_ wrong end of the stick here!” 

“I don’t want you to be a drag queen,” James said, quietly, carefully, “I want you to be a _real_ trade show model. A woman.” 

“A booth babe,” Ben added. 

This was even more ridiculous. “Are you out of your mind?” I said, almost shrieking. “Even if I agreed to do it, how would that even work? I mean, _look_ at me!” 

“Honey,” Ben said, “I’ve been looking since you walked in. _You_ could do it.” 

“I think he’s right,” James said. “I mean, and I _really_ don’t want to offend you here, so sorry in advance, but you’re quite short, you’re slim, you’re — I’m really sorry about this — actually rather pretty…” 

My belly filled up with warm syrup, which was a surprise. “I’m ‘pretty’...?” I echoed in a whisper. The concept was absurd. 

“When you don’t cover your face with all that stubble,” James muttered. I suppressed a grimace: ‘stubble’ was giving it airs it didn’t deserve; it was basically bumfluff. I _was_ only nineteen; I had plenty of time to grow a real beard. I kept telling myself. 

I covered my face with my hand anyway, suddenly extremely self-conscious. 

“I still don’t see how this could work,” I said quietly. 

“Look,” James said, “how about we all go to my place where it’s nice and private. Ben can work his magic on you, and if it doesn’t work out, we’ve still got the afternoon to try and come up with another idea.” 

“I don’t know…” I said. 

James waited in silence until I looked back up at him. When I finally did so, he trapped me with his deep brown eyes. I couldn’t look away. 

“Please?” he said softly. “Just give it a try?” 

Something took control of my mouth and said, “Okay.” 

  


  


James’ apartment was smaller than I expected. Granted, it was larger than mine, but I’d seen cupboards larger than my apartment. It was nicely fitted out, though, and clearly in another price bracket from the hovel I grudgingly called home. 

James ushered me in through the front door first, as if to make sure I couldn’t run away without having to go through him, Ben, and Ben’s enormous suitcase. He sat me down on his sofa and, without asking, poured me a colourful drink from one of the glitzier-looking bottles on his bar. It only didn’t look like a double because it looked like a triple. 

“To relax you,” he explained, handing me the glass. 

I needed relaxing, so I downed it in a couple of gulps, pre-emptively wincing against the burn and then, when the burn didn’t come, regaining the very stupid look on my face that had served me so well in James’ office. It tasted fruity. 

“You were expecting whiskey?” James asked, smiling. I nodded, feeling a little too foolish to speak. “Sorry, I didn’t want to scorch your throat.” 

“Thanks,” I said weakly. 

Ben clapped his hands. “Enough chatter!” he said. “Enough booze! Let’s get on with this; I’ve got a show to get ready for tonight.” 

As he wheeled his suitcase into what turned out to be James’ bathroom I turned to James and tried to ask, with a mixture of silent gestures, if Ben performed drag with his immaculate beard intact. James nodded. 

“Get in here!” Ben commanded, his voice echoing in the bathroom. 

  


  


It turns out, getting your legs waxed is horrible. 

Ben had insisted I be completely naked, and waved aside my protests by confirming to me in a very matter-of-fact tone of voice that I didn’t possess anything he hadn’t seen and dined on before, and assuring me he wasn’t into twinks anyway. 

I think I can be excused keeping my eyes firmly shut for the whole of the waxing process. 

He did my legs, and then moved onto my crotch without warning me. The first strip shocked me too much to scream, and while he was preparing the second strip I quickly jammed a flannel between my teeth, so that the only noises I made as he depilated the rest of my junk were some strained whimpering and whatever sound a flannel makes when it’s being destroyed by teeth. It tasted gross. 

“You can open your eyes now,” Ben said. 

I compromised, and opened one. “Are we done with waxing?” I asked. 

“Yes,” he said. “Now we sort out that horrible little teenage beard thing you’ve got going on.” 

Before I could get too deeply into worrying about what arcane torture devices he might apply to my oh-so-manly chin fluff, he’d slathered me in paste. It was brown and smelled absolutely disgusting. 

“Ugh,” I commented. 

“Count yourself lucky,” Ben said. “This stuff will dissolve that blonde fluff on your face without any trouble in just a few minutes. If you had a beard like me or James then we could leave it on for half an hour and all it would do is give you a rash.” He looked annoyed when he said that, like he’d tried it on himself. I looked down at the tube he’d squeezed it out of and noticed it was half empty; obviously he had. 

True to his word, when I washed it off a few minutes later it took most of my straggly hair with it. I took a razor to the rest of it. The end result wasn’t particularly any more fresh-faced than I usually looked when I did a close shave, and illustrated why I almost never shaved if I could help it: without the assistance of the much-abused bumfluff on my face, I struggled to look like a nineteen year-old man. I’d stopped shaving when I got fed up with getting carded buying painkillers. It didn’t help. 

We were both startled by a light knock on the bathroom door. 

“Everything okay in there?” James called. 

“Yes!” Ben hissed. “Now go away! You can’t rush perfection!” 

“You need anything?” 

“No!” Ben and I said at once. The prospect of walking out of the bathroom fully clothed (in a dress) was bad enough; I wasn’t at all ready for him to see me naked and as hairless as the day I was born. 

Ben kicked the bathroom door for emphasis. I made a grateful face. 

I had to admit, as the sound of retreating footsteps indicated that James’ curiosity had been beaten, that my legs looked better without hair. I’d never really developed that nice, thick coat of body hair that men like James had, that helped them look sculpted and defined; my legs just seemed to grow sad little patches of blonde hair that stuck out at strange angles and accentuated how scrawny they were. And my attempts to build muscle had gone about as poorly as my attempts to grow attractive body hair: I had a set of weights at home that I never used, because I was never at home to use them. The bulk of my exercise was the walk from my apartment to the office and back again, which least seemed to keep me thin, even if it didn’t give me proper muscle tone. 

An advantage today, I thought. I shifted position on the stool Ben had perched me on, and my legs rubbed against each other. The feeling was quite strange: it was like they were frictionless. I rubbed them against each other again, and giggled; the alcohol was settling in. 

“Finally having fun, are we?” Ben said, smiling. 

I tried not to blush. “I’ll never do this again,” I replied, looking away, “so I might as well try to enjoy it.” I realised as I said it that I wasn’t lying. 

“Good,” Ben said, “because now the fun part begins.” 

  


  


It had never occurred to me before that makeup would have a smell to it. I’d never dated a girl long enough to be around her when she was putting her makeup on, so prior to this I’d only encountered it pre-applied, as it were. Ben was applying foundation, and as I watched him in the mirror I breathed in through my nose and enjoyed the subtle floral scent of the makeup. 

He handed me the sponge. 

“Um,” I commented. 

“Now _you_ try,” he said, indicating the half of my face that didn’t yet have coverage. 

“Why?” 

“Because _if_ you’re going to be doing this trade show thing—” 

“—I’m not.” 

“But _if_ you are — and I think you can agree that we should proceed with the best of intentions — then you’re going to need to know how to touch up your makeup, and you don’t have a lot of time to watch YouTube tutorials.” 

I sighed. “What do I do?” 

He put his fingers over mine and guided the sponge around my jawline. “Like this,” he said. “Gentle strokes…” He let go and nodded at me to continue. 

I looked at myself in the mirror. I don’t know why applying makeup myself felt different to having Ben do it, but something inside me was rebelling against the very idea. Like doing it myself made it something I was making an active choice to participate in, not just something my lovable arsehole of a boss-friend and his gay ex-roommate were doing _to_ me. 

Clearly, I was being an idiot. After we’d finished removing all traces of hair from my body, Ben had had me put on a bra, which he’d filled out with breast forms that were smaller — and colder! — than I had expected, and while I was getting used to the slowly-warming boobs suddenly attached to my chest he’d had me step into a couple of garments that were more like building foundation than underwear. I had on a pair of knickers made of extraordinarily stretchy fabric which, after a quick pantomimed demonstration from Ben which made my eyes cross, hid my junk completely and left me with a smooth crotch; and on top of those I wore a ridiculous contraption which clung to my butt and upper thighs and looked like someone had welded squishy raw chicken to my undercarriage. 

So, I told myself, if I’m sitting here with breasts and no (visible) dick and a bunch of padding around my arse that makes me look like I actually _have_ an arse, then there’s no sense in getting squeamish about applying a little foundation. 

No sense at all. 

Carefully, looking sideways at Ben to make sure I was doing it correctly, I stroked the sponge across my cheek. 

  


  


James had hammered on the bathroom door again, just as we were nearing the end of our makeup routine but while I was still essentially naked. Ben had told him that if he couldn’t contain himself he should go for a walk and, after some light threats, James had grumpily agreed. Ben and I listened carefully for the front door and his feet on the stairs in the common area before we carried on. 

And carry on we did: to the wig cap Ben had added a long, blonde wig, which he placed on my head and then styled. He made me watch what he was doing again, so I could fix my hair while I was at the trade show. 

“But I’m not _going_ to the trade show,” I insisted. 

“Nevertheless,” he insisted back. I couldn’t argue with that. 

After the wig came the dress. I know I haven’t described the dress up until this point, even though it had been hanging on the shower rail the whole time. There was just something too _real_ about it. It was _so_ blue and _so_ short and _so_ a part of this whole exercise that I was becoming more and more dubious about as the alcohol left my system. 

It was even more real when I was wearing it. 

It was tight, and hugged my fake curves like a second skin. It was short, reaching barely two-thirds of the way down my thighs; less when I sat down. And it was electric blue. I would have preferred a more muted colour, but Ben explained that he’d chosen my makeup to complement the dress, and he’d chosen the dress because it was the closest match he had to the colour of MCAC’s company logo, which was also the colour of the dresses we were going to have at the trade show. 

After the dress, the simple black shoes with the low heel were almost anti-climactic. 

With James out of the apartment we’d left the bathroom so we could both look at me in more neutral light. James had a full-length mirror in his bedroom and as I walked slightly unsteadily (alcohol; shoes) up to it, I have to admit that I gasped. 

I was fucking _gorgeous_. 

And there was no way I could tell there was a, well, a _me_ under that dress, and that was with me having the advantage of knowing for a fact that there was. 

“Girl,” Ben said, “you wear that better’n I do.” I must have flinched a little, because he added, “And that’s something you’ve got to get used to right now, because if you react strange when someone calls you a beautiful woman — and they will — then you’ll give the game away.” 

Oh God. 

I looked at myself again: I couldn’t get away from the woman in the mirror; she held on to me. I realised a second later I was hugging myself. 

“Ben—” I said, and then forgot what I was going to say next because I was still looking at myself as I spoke and the most ridiculous thing about all of this had suddenly, finally occurred to me. “What the _fuck_ , Ben?” I burst out. “I may look the part — and Jesus Christ do I look the part — but the moment I open my mouth, everyone’s going to _know!_ ” 

Ben took a step forward and put calming hands on my shoulders. 

“I know a trick for that,” he said. 

“ _What?_ ” I almost screeched. Screeching like that was starting to become a habit. 

“It doesn’t work for me, but your voice is high enough that you can get away with it. Come on, sit with me.” 

He patted James’ bed and, after a moment, I shrugged and sat next to him. I was nothing but doubts but I wanted to hear how he could possibly cover up my man’s voice as easily as he covered up my man’s body. 

“This is something trans women learn,” he said, “and impressionists, voice actors, and — yes — drag queens sometimes, if they want to.” The expression on his face said that he, personally, did not. “But the difference between men’s and women’s voices isn’t just a matter of pitch. If you think about it, I’m sure you can come up with men with quite high voices and women with quite deep ones. There’s a huge overlap in the middle, and your voice is right inside that overlap.” 

“Yes,” I said, acutely aware of my own voice as I did so, “but men with high-voices still sound like _men_. I don’t know why; they just do. Same with women, but the other way around.” 

“ _You_ might not know why,” Ben said, “but I do. When your voice broke, your Adam’s apple — which I can’t for the life of me actually see on you, but which I assume is in there somewhere — expanded, and that’s why your voice got deeper and, if you’ll pardon the technical term, manlier. But you can still talk out of the small part of your vocal cords, if you know the trick.” 

I sighed, still sceptical. “What’s the trick?” 

“Put a hand on your chest,” he said, putting a hand on his own chest. “Right here.” 

I copied him, feeling the tops of the breast forms under my hand. An unusual sensation. 

“Now, say something,” he commanded. 

Lost for words, I attempted, “Something.” 

“Something _longer_ ,” he said, exasperated. 

“Um,” I said. A piece of doggerel popped into my brain: “The rain in Spain stays mainly on the plain.” 

Ben laughed. “Interesting choice. You feel your chest vibrate as you said that?” I nodded. “Okay, now what you want to do is say that _without_ your chest vibrating.” Before I could ask the obvious question, he continued, “Say ‘aah’.” 

“Aah?” 

“No, like you’re at the dentist and he wants to look at your back teeth.” 

“Aaaaaaah.” 

“Good. Keep going.” I kept going, and he kept talking. “Feel your chest. No vibrations?” I shook my head, which made my _aaah_ sound funny. “Now, without taking a breath, go through the other vowels.” 

I did so, waiting for my chest to start vibrating the way it had when I spoke before. It didn’t. 

“This is your ‘head voice’. This is what you’re going to talk in. It takes practice, and it’ll sound a little reedy until you’re good at it, but you _can_ practice it and you _will_ get good at it. And don’t worry; it only becomes permanent if you never use your ‘other’ voice. You’ll be able to switch back after the trade show.” 

“Switch back?” I said, in my normal voice. Ben slapped me, lightly, on the leg. 

“In head voice!” he commanded. “If it helps, try going ‘aah’ again and then turning it into a humming sound without ever leaving your head voice.” 

I did as he suggested. It took a couple of goes to get it right. With his encouragement, I kept at it until I could do it every time. 

“ _Now_ try and say something. Come at it from humming if it helps.” 

It did. “Mmmmmswitch back?” I said, managing to stay in head voice. 

“Well done. And yes, you shouldn’t switch back for a couple of days; you need to talk like this until the trade show. You need practice, and you need to get used to it!” 

“It’s hard,” I said, my voice almost cracking on the second word. 

“Then we practice!” Ben said. I glanced at the bedroom door, worried. Ben noticed. “I texted James and made him promise not to come back home until I say it’s okay, so you _don’t_ have to worry about him walking in on us.” 

My relief must have been obvious because he smiled at me. 

“Okay,” he said. “Let’s just have a normal conversation, and you stay in head voice the whole time. I’ll poke you if you drop out. Ready? What do you do at work?” 

Work? I could talk about work until the cows came home. I loved working at MCAC. 

  


  


“Are you ready?” Ben asked. 

“Absolutely not,” I whispered. 

“Well, you’ve got ten seconds to _get_ ready.” 

I swallowed. 

After an hour of talking back and forth, Ben pronounced me ‘better enough’. I was getting used to talking in the ‘head voice’. We made a few recordings on my phone so I could hear what I sounded like, and true to Ben’s word, I sounded like a woman. Kind of a tired woman with a relatively deep voice, for sure, but Ben promised me that with practice I would get better at it, sound clearer, and my average pitch would likely also raise. He also said I should use the recording as a reference to help me get back into the swing of things in the morning, and made me promise to use the voice for the rest of the afternoon and evening. 

So there we were, standing in James’ living room. I was dressed in a shockingly tight blue dress, heels, and a wig Ben swore was real human hair. I was talking in my head voice. I was sneaking a double of the drink James had poured me earlier to keep myself from running screaming into the night. 

I didn’t know what to do with my hands without pockets, so I sort of held one hand in the other in front of my waist. 

A key turned in the front door lock. 

“Is it too late to run?” I asked quietly, maintaining my head voice. 

“If you run, after all the work I just put in,” Ben said, “I’ll chase you down myself.” 

And then James was back. 

It must have been raining outside, because his hair was slicked back and his coat was drenched. There was a dark look on his face as he closed the door, but it evaporated when he looked at us. 

“A— Alex?” he said. 

Okay, it’s possible he was just looking at _me_. I gave him a little wave. 

“Holy shit,” he said, and started crossing the floor to where we were standing. He raised his arms as if to hug me, but Ben pushed him away. 

“Absolutely not!” Ben said. “You’re soaking wet. Go dry your hair and put on some new clothes.” He grinned. “She’s been waiting hours for you; she can wait another few minutes.” 

I blushed hard. Ben had been calling me a woman and a girl repeatedly for the whole hour we’d been talking, but something about the pronoun hit me deep in the chest. 

“Of course!” James said. “I’ll be quick,” he promised. 

After he closed the bedroom door I almost fainted. 

“I’d call that a success,” Ben said. 

I frowned. “What do you mean?” 

“ _He_ knows who you are, and if I know men I’d say that the rush of blood to his head just now was only equalled by the rush of blood to his cock.” I opened my mouth to protest, if for no other reason than the crude phrasing — and out of a strange sense of loyalty to James, who I didn’t like to hear described that way — but Ben cut me off. “So no straight man at that trade show is going to think you’re anything but a smoking hot booth babe.” 

The alcohol made me giggle. “Hey,” I said, “if you get to be a performance artiste in the medium of drag,” I inserted the _e_ in artist with a grin, “then _I_ get to be a trade show model.” 

“So you _are_ going to do it, then?” he asked, suddenly serious. 

“I don’t know,” I admitted. “You really think my voice will be okay?” 

“I think _with practice_ your voice will be okay,” he said. “So _don’t stop practicing!_ ” 

I re-did my _aah_ s and my hums a few times. 

  


  


James was taking his time. Ben and I were comfortably passing the time chatting and helping ourselves to James’ home bar when Ben’s phone chimed. 

“Shit,” he muttered. “Well, I can’t wait here forever; I have a show tonight.” 

I was suddenly frozen with panic. “You’re going to leave me here with him? Alone? Like _this!_ ” I gestured down at the dress, the shoes, the hip pads, both breasts; everything, really. Suddenly it wasn’t a fun game I was playing with a new friend (who had made very clear that he wasn’t into me no matter what clothes I might or might not have on); suddenly I was going to be alone, dressed up as a girl, with an old friend, in his apartment. I thought back to Ben’s comments about the rush of blood to James’ dick, and blushed. And panicked again. Panic-blushed. 

“You’ll be fine!” Ben said. 

“How do I even take all this off!” I said, taking a moment to realise I hadn’t dropped my head voice even under duress and being mildly impressed at myself despite everything. 

“Just undress and get in the shower,” Ben said, looking at me like I was an idiot. 

He was right: I was an idiot. For some reason the transformation he’d guided me through had felt so total that it hadn’t occurred to me that I could just remove the bum pads and the wig and the boobs, and shower off the makeup. My skinny legs would still be shaven but when did I ever show them to anyone, anyway? 

I relaxed. A little. 

“Gotta go!” Ben said, and kissed me gently on the forehead. While I’d been having a moment of self-discovery re my own idiocy, he’d obviously been gathering some things up: he had a couple of plastic bags slung over his shoulder that hadn’t been there moments before. “I’ll leave the trunk,” he added, nodding at the luggage, out of which he had extracted all the torture devices he’d used on me, and which I knew contained more clothes and probably other drag accessories I didn’t want to think about, “in case you need it.” 

In case I need it for _what?_

I didn’t have time to ask, because he was out of the front door in a whirl. 

And I was alone. In James’ apartment. In a dress. 

And it was getting dark outside. 

I needed another drink. 

  


  


I’d knocked back another double of the unlabelled liquor — which I had eventually decided tasted of cherries and was completely delicious — and succumbed to slightly drunken boredom. I hunted around the apartment for my office clothes, looking for my phone; I didn’t find my clothes, which were probably in the bathroom, but I found my phone, wallet and keys on the table by the front door. James was still a no-show. 

“You okay?” I called through his bedroom door, managing to stay in head voice. 

“Yes,” he replied. I thought I could detect a slight hesitation. I wondered what he was doing in there. 

“Ben’s gone to his drag show,” I said, leaning against the door so I didn’t sway on the high heels, “so you need to come out and keep me company.” 

“Two minutes,” he called back. 

I shrugged and walked back over to the couch. The sound of heels on a wooden floor was a sound I’d always associated with women; it was strange indeed that I was responsible for it this time. I sat down, leaned into the cushions, and experimentally tried crossing my legs. It was uncomfortable to cross them at the thighs — I could feel my cock getting a little crushed inside those stretchy knickers Ben had made me wear, and perversely I felt like the reminder of its presence wasn’t helping with the role I was trying to get into — so I settled for crossing them at the ankles, and relaxed. 

I was midway through replying to my third work-related email on my phone when James’ door finally, _finally_ opened. 

I looked over. He’d changed into some slightly nicer stuff than he usually wore at the office, although I, a fashion novice at best, struggled to pinpoint what it was about it that was nicer, specifically. 

“Hi,” I said, smiling. “What took you so long?” 

“I just—” he started, then interrupted himself with, “What happened to your _voice?_ ” 

I frowned. “You only just noticed? I was yelling at you through your bedroom door.” 

He looked nonplussed. “I, uh, didn’t put two and two together,” he admitted. “I mean, Ben said he could do something, but… You sound like a _girl!_ How do you do it?” 

“With effort,” I said. “But it’s getting easier. Ben taught me.” 

“But you can go back, right?” 

Aw. So concerned. “So he promises me,” I said. I could tell he expected me to have dropped into my old voice to prove that I could, so I added, “I’m trying to keep it up. As practice. If I’m going to do the trade show, I need to get _really_ good.” 

James, who had been standing in the doorway to his bedroom like an idiot, almost flinched at that. 

“You’re really going to do it?” he said, walking over to the sofa. I shuffled over a little so he could sit next to me without being uncomfortably close; he sat uncomfortably close anyway. Thighs touching. 

“Maybe,” I said. I’d been thinking about it while I wrote emails on autopilot. “There’s no way we can get someone else at this notice. We were insanely lucky to get the three Hammond girls, and now we’re down to just one, so it’s either her and me, or it’s just her.” I held up a finger. “I’m _not_ saying I’m definitely going to do it. But I’m going to see how this goes for the next couple of hours and if I don’t completely freak out then it’s a solid maybe.” I shook myself slightly. “I need to lay off the alcohol; I won’t be able to get by at the expo tipsy.” 

James frowned. “You’re drunk?” 

I put my raised finger on his lips, and then wondered why I was touching him so casually. I put my finger away. “Only enough to make my inner voice slightly less screamy,” I said. It was a half-lie: my inner voice was actually having a bit of fun with how self-conscious the normally controlled and together James McCain looked. 

“Well, what should we do for the next couple of hours, while you sober up?” James asked. 

_Push him,_ my inner voice said. _See just how uncomfortable he can get._

“Why don’t we go out to dinner?” I said brightly. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm writing this to blow off steam while I work on my 'serious' project. It'll probably get a bit sexy (at which point I'll up the rating if it seems appropriate) and it's unlikely to get too horribly dramatic.
> 
> I've tagged it with both crossdressing/feminization and trans female character because I don't actually know how Alex's identity is going to shake out by the end of the story. Could be either. Both are cool. If you don't like that and want to step out, that's fine.
> 
> This story is written, very sloppily and without much in the way of proof-reading or editing, by a trans woman. So it's not going to get all gross and weird and a-woman's-place-is-to-service-men like some of these sorts of stories do. This whole thing comes from being linked something with a vaguely similar idea and thinking it could be a fun short story if the ugly stuff was taken out. I just think people who might be boys or might be girls or might be something else that they haven't quite decided on yet should get a chance to work themselves out around people they're kind of into, and maybe kiss them a bit.
> 
> There's no schedule; the next bit will come out whenever I feel like blowing off some more steam.
> 
> (The title might change if one occurs that doesn't totally suck. Titles are hard.)


	2. Chapter 2

We had the contents of Ben’s case spread out on James’ bed. All I’ll say about most of it is, if I didn’t know he was a drag queen before, the dresses he owned would have convinced me pretty quickly. Almost none of it was suitable for a quiet night out; very little of it was even suitable for a loud night in. And James and I both agreed there was absolutely no _way_ I could to wear the electric blue dress to a restaurant; I looked like a colour-inverted traffic cone. Ben’s collection contained an overabundance of extremely bright fabrics; in retrospect it wasn’t surprising he was able to find a close match for MCAC’s company colour, as subtlety didn’t seem to be one of his considerations when choosing clothes for himself.

I looked up from the kaleidoscope on top of the duvet and caught another glimpse of myself in James’ full-length mirror. A glimpse that turned into a gawk. Just when I thought I was getting used to all the new experiences this afternoon was bringing — speaking in this voice, wearing these clothes, being all shoved into unfamiliar and not entirely comfortable underwear — there’d be _something_ that bowled me over again. When we were sitting down on the sofa together, warmly drunk, thighs touching, that _something_ had been the view of my bare, shaven legs poking out of a dress that didn’t reach my knees, contrasted against the ordinary dark trousers James had on. The feeling of the fabric of his trousers brushing against my calves had been almost electric.

This time, that _something_ was me, the whole of me, reflected in the mirror, looking for all the world like a normal woman, albeit one with questionable taste in clothes. It was the first time I’d really looked at myself since I put the dress on. I watched myself breathe, mesmerised.

I think James said something, but I missed it. I was too bewitched by this apparition in the mirror, this beautiful woman who, I was suddenly perversely afraid, might vanish if I closed my eyes.

“You know what’s weird?” I said, aware as I did so that I sounded slightly dazed. “I’ve never looked my age before. I’ve always looked younger than I am.”

James said something else that I didn’t catch. I ran a finger along my cheekbone and down my jawline, frowning. Even with the assistance of the horrible-smelling brown goop Ben had covered me in, my jaw still had a little of that strangely smooth feeling you found on men’s faces after they’d had a close shave. I’d have to remember not to let anyone who wasn’t in on the secret touch my face.

James’ hands closed over my bare shoulders. I jumped, and would have turned around except he was holding me in place. I turned my head instead and almost headbutted him, he was so close.

“Alex?” he said kindly. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah, I think so,” I said. _Head voice, head voice, head voice,_ I recited to myself. I’d almost cracked on that first word.

“We don’t have to go out if you don’t want to.” His voice was gentle.

I sternly interrogated myself, trying to push aside the alcohol that was still warming me from the inside out.

What did I want? I wanted our software to find a buyer, to get either a single big contract or a bunch of little guys who could help get our name out there. I wanted our company to succeed. I wanted to be successful myself, and I wanted James to be proud of me. Even with the contributions I’d made to the codebases of various projects, I’d never felt quite like I belonged among the engineering staff at MCAC: they all, James included, had qualifications, degrees, experience; I was a deadbeat kid hired straight out of school by a family friend, and it was just lucky that I turned out to have a knack for coding. Whenever one of the engineers worked with us remotely, and on the very occasional visits they paid to the office, there was a part of me that felt like a fraud. Maybe that’s why I threw myself into the organisational stuff so much; I was better at talking to people than most of our skeleton staff, which felt more like something I _deserved_ to be good at.

What did I have to do to _get_ what I wanted? Well, right now what the company needed to succeed was to draw attention to ourselves, and at a crowded trade show, if you couldn’t afford or didn’t have time to set up a large, impressive stand, that meant hiring pretty girls to wear eye-catching colours and demonstrate the value of your product to interested people. And since the number of girls available to help us out on that front had just collapsed to one…

It looked like, to get what I wanted, I had to be a booth babe. A trade show model. It was something I was, seemingly, inexplicably, suited for, in a way no-one else we could get our hands on at such short notice was. In the mirror, I confirmed again that I looked good enough to fool myself.

The only question was, was I good enough to fool everyone else?

“Let’s go out,” I said. “Let’s go to dinner.” I patted one of his hands, and shrugged to prompt him to remove them from my shoulders. He did. “We need to know if I can handle _this_ around other people, and we need to know if other people see an ordinary woman when they look at me. If it’s a negative in either column then we need to come up with a new idea, so the sooner we know, the better.”

James nodded. “Okay,” he said, and then grinned. “Should we come up with a safe word?”

I frowned. “A safe word?”

“Pomegranate,” he decided. “If you get too uncomfortable and need to get somewhere safe, just say ‘pomegranate’.”

I laughed. “We’ll be out in public. If I say ‘pomegranate’ and then we both leave without a word, that’s going to look pretty weird. If I need to come home, I’ll just say so.”

  


  


In the Uber, I realised I was sobering up: the nice warm feeling had dissipated and now my belly was filled with ice cubes. Worse, I needed a piss and the suspension on the rideshare car was terrible.

I’d managed to recalibrate James from his automatic assumption that ‘going out to dinner’ meant a posh restaurant and not, for example, a Pizza Express, and as soon as he got the message it was like a light bulb turned on over his head. He dug in some drawers and found a few casual items that an old girlfriend had left behind, unsuitable for a reservation at Le Fucke Maison or whatever the hell (languages are not my strong point; adding an unnecessary extra _e_ to unsuspecting English words apparently is) but probably fine for a pasta meal for two at a classier-than-McDonald’s-but-don’t-go-nuts chain restaurant.

Naturally, his ex-girlfriend hadn’t left behind any trousers for me to wear.

So there I was in the Uber in a dark blue maxi dress (like I said, I’m not a fashion expert, but I’m together enough to read the labels inside dresses) with a nice subtle pattern on it, and the same heels (which didn’t 100% work with the dress, but I was fine with that), worrying about how I was going to take a piss without giving the game away. I had visions of walking into the women’s loos at Pizza Express and being suddenly laid bare in the harsh lighting: stubble visible, head somehow the wrong shape, hairline probably also suspicious as hell. I pictured myself held down by restaurant staff while a panicked customer called the police.

At least this dress covered my shoulders, and when I looked down I couldn’t see my knees any more.

“You kids having a nice night out, yeah?” the driver said, shaking me out of my thoughts and distracting me from my anxious bladder.

I looked over at James, who seemed lost in his own world, staring out of the window at the rain, which had started up again shortly after we got in the car. We were headed to another part of the city, on the theory that if it all went tits-up (pun not intended) then at least we weren’t anywhere near our apartments or the office, and could safely never show our faces there again. Assuming we got out alive.

I tried using my psychic powers to jolt James out of his introspection and make him respond to the driver, but unfortunately I was no more psychic than I had been at age twelve when I’d gotten a little overexcited after an X-Men movie marathon. Obviously it was up to me.

I swallowed to lubricate my throat — I wasn’t going to be able to start with an _aah_ like I had been when I was practicing in James’ apartment, and the thought of fucking it up had turned my mouth into the Sahara — and said, simply, “Yes.”

It came out okay! Not my best work, sure — it sounded more like I had when I first started working on it, eight hundred million years ago this afternoon — but good enough. I followed up with a smile, hoping the man would be satisfied.

“A date?” he said.

“Yes,” I said, suddenly horrified at the idea that he might try his luck with me if he thought I was available. “First date,” I clarified. I didn’t want to have to pull off a girlfriend-and-boyfriend-in-love act with James seemingly mentally absent and me, from a combination of nerves, heels and alcohol, having to work hard at standing in one place without falling down.

“You two have a good time, yeah?” the driver said, returning his attention to the road.

I sighed in relief and nudged James with my foot.

No response. Damn. When we got to the restaurant was he just going to keep sitting there? Would I have to lamp him with my shoe to wake him up? I hooked my ankle around his foot — there, again, was the interesting sensation of his trouser on my bare leg — and yanked on him as subtly as I could. As if waking from a dream, James came alive. He blinked at me.

I tried to indicate, using a complex system of eyebrow waggles, that he should pay some fucking attention. He frowned, then seemed to realise what I was on about, and mouthed, _Sorry_.

I should think so, too. He wasn’t the one in the dress.

It wasn’t long after that we finally got to the restaurant. The driver parked up over the road and told us we were lovely passengers. I whipped my phone out of the handbag slung over my shoulder (another gift from the ex-girlfriend, and I could see why she left it behind: it was kind of battered and the side pockets flapped loose inside the main compartment) and ostentatiously gave him a five-star review. He hadn’t tried to hit on me, nor had he beaten the crap out of me for being a man in a dress; he hit all my gold standards for good service.

I got out of the car and then had to dive for the shelter of an overhanging shopfront. It was still raining! And James’ inconsiderate ex hadn’t left any jackets for me to borrow, _and_ we were both too distracted to have picked up an umbrella. I stood under the veranda, my arms crossed over my body for warmth, and wondered how I was going to make it across the road to Pizza Express without the rain plastering my dress to my body.

James announced his arrival next to me with a, “Fuck,” which I thought was on point. At least _he_ had a couple of layers on, and a jacket. I looked up at him — even in heels, he was still taller than me — to ask what he thought, but he was already taking his jacket off. He gestured for me to turn around, and when I did, he put it over my shoulders.

It was huge. With the arms of the coat loose and the whole of me contained inside it, I felt like a teenage girl in one of those coming-of-age movies who’d just been given her boyfriend’s letterman jacket. James completed the picture by putting an arm around me and leaning over slightly, his head shielding mine from some of the rain, and I, deciding I could set aside some time to be embarrassed about this later, hugged him tightly.

As one, we crossed the street.

  


  


If you’d raised the topic with me six months ago — hell, if you’d asked me yesterday — I would have said that the idea of going into the women’s toilets in a public place was extremely low on my bucket list, somewhere around ‘get shot’, but by the time we got to the restaurant I was too desperate even to hesitate. I dived for the women’s room as soon as we were inside, side-stepping around a pair of older women who were just leaving and who showered me with friendly smiles (which I took as votes of confidence in my appearance) and hurriedly locked myself inside the closest cubicle. I had to take the stupid bum pads off before I could pull my knickers down and sit — I had enough presence of mind to sit down, thank God — but when I was finally ready to piss, it was everything I’d been dreaming of and more.

When my brain came back online, somewhere around halfway through, I realised I could hear someone peeing in the next cubicle but couldn’t hear my own. Paranoia made me reach down and tuck my dick back a little, just enough that the stream went straight into the bowl. I didn’t want to give my neighbour any reason to be suspicious of me. Just a normal woman having a piss, here. Nothing strange about it. Please leave the bathroom?

Thankfully, cleaning myself up and reupholstering my undercarriage took enough time that the other woman — oops, I mean _the_ woman — was well into washing her hands before I was even fully dressed again. I learned from past mistakes and put the knickers on over the bum pads, so next time I wouldn’t have to get quite so horrifyingly near-naked.

 _‘Next time’,_ I realised. Dammit. Today, tomorrow, and the three days of the expo meant I had five days of this farce ahead of me.

I made sure I was presentable and left the cubicle. The bathroom was empty except for me, and I breathed out. It was weird, watching myself in the mirror, the way my artificial chest reacted differently to even just the normal process of breathing. So many little differences.

Critically examining myself, I thought that perhaps Ben’s makeup job — intended both to be eye-catching and to go with a dress that was so blue it hurt my eyes — was a little over the top for the clothes and the environment I found myself in. I rubbed experimentally at my eyelids, trying to reduce the amount of colour there, but didn’t have much luck until I brought a paper towel into play.

Better. I extracted a lipgloss from the hastily-assembled assortment of makeup I’d dumped in my handbag back at the apartment, and swiped it across my lips. All those drinks I’d had back at James’ had taken their toll on the lip colour Ben had applied, and I’d looked a little lopsided, like a pro makeup artist had started work on me but got called away by an emergency while they were halfway down my face.

I took the opportunity the empty bathroom presented and ran through my voice warm-up exercises again, taking care to watch myself in the mirror: I was trying to speed-run getting used to being a woman, after all; I couldn’t very well flinch every time I passed a reflective surface when we got to the expo.

I smiled at myself — the things I was doing! — and exited the loos to find James hovering nervously just outside.

“Weren’t you getting us a table?” I asked, confused but thankfully firmly back in my head voice.

“I was worried,” he said.

Aw. Again. “You’re very sweet,” I said. “I don’t know why you’re so nervous.” I was trying to keep my public statements neutral in case my paranoia was right, and amateur bathroom detectives were following us around, trying to catch us out.

He looked perplexed at that. I controlled the urge to sigh — the risks we were taking were ninety percent on my head and only ten on his, and yet I was the one doing my best to act like I belonged while he was the one glancing around the place, looking like he was scanning the environment for improvised explosives and hidden snipers — and took his hand.

I tried to ignore the way he jumped. It was getting annoying the way he kept bouncing from being normal when we were alone together to being a wreck when we were around other people.

“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get a nice, quiet table in the back.”

I led him to the small queue of people standing near the entrance. He was shaking a little, so while we waited to be served, I stroked his hand gently with my fingernails.

  


  


The waitress led us to a booth at the back of the restaurant, dropped some menus on the table and left us to it. I sat, smoothing my skirt out as I did so, having noticed in the car that if I didn’t it rumpled up. When I finished making myself comfortable I looked over at James and noticed that, while he’d managed successfully to sit down, he still looked stiff and scared.

“For fuck’s sake, James!” I hissed. “What is _wrong_ with you?”

He frowned, but at least he relaxed his shoulders. It looked like to took some effort. “I don’t know,” he said. “I thought I’d be cool with this, but it’s hard.”

“‘This’?”

“You know: you, like this. I mean, don’t take this the wrong way, Alex…”

When he trailed off I made ‘please continue’ gestures that hopefully also indicated that I wasn’t planning on taking whatever it was the wrong way.

“But you’re gorgeous,” he finished.

I blinked. I’d had that thought myself, of course — I’d been ruminating on the implications all afternoon — but to hear him say it was quite something else. I remembered the way he’d called me pretty, all those hours ago, in his office. Some of the warm feeling from the apartment came back to me, and I couldn’t quite stop myself from smiling.

“Is that it?” I said, and then lowered my voice to a whisper. “You’re not scared people will find out?” I was surprised to note that even whispers sounded different in head voice. Very odd.

He laughed at me. Which I was sort of offended by and relieved by at the same time. “Not a chance,” he said. “I mean, look at you!”

I sighed. “I’ve _been_ looking. It’s weird. So what’s up, then? You think I’m…” I couldn’t say the word. “You think I’m okay-looking, fine. Why’re you being strange?”

He thought for a moment. “When it’s just us, it’s like it’s normal,” he said. “You’re just Alex, even if you look… like that at the moment. It’s comfortable.” I nodded. We’d always had an easy chemistry; it’s why we worked so well together. “When we’re around other people, it’s like, suddenly it’s _real._ ”

I could relate to that part. “Real how?” I asked, biting my lip a little after.

“You’re a girl — or you’re supposed to be — and I’m a man, and we’re together in a car, or in a restaurant, and that’s… loaded, you know? I don’t know how I should behave around you, I mean, I know what people expect to see, but I don’t want to offend you, or—”

“James,” I interrupted, “please, for the duration of this— this— this _whatever it is_ , I want you to discard any worries you have about offending me.” At this point, I kind of wanted to hurt him for being so dense, but that could wait until the five days had passed and I could drop character and really go to town on him with one of the heavier office keyboards. “The more you treat this — me — like it’s all normal, the less likely I am to have difficulties.”

“Difficulties?” he echoed.

“Yeah, like people kicking the shit out of me, for a start.” I was fixated on people responding to me with violence. Can’t imagine why.

“Alex,” he said, “you have no worries on that front.” He dropped to a whisper. “You look like you’ve always been a girl. You even walk right.”

I tried not to deal with the first part of that sentiment and zeroed in on the second. “I think it’s the heels,” I said. “I couldn’t walk like I normally do even if I wanted to.”

We were silent for a few moments.

“So,” I said, “if that’s all it is…” I trailed off, trying to prompt him into being a bit more verbose. I was starting to miss the unflappable old James who was never lost for words.

He looked pained. “That’s not all,” he said. “I still don’t know how to behave, really. I’m trying to do what comes naturally, but what worries me is what natural behaviour means to me in this situation. It’s like…” He stopped himself, and looked thoughtful. “Half of me wants to just end this right now, but—”

“Are you ready to order?” the lurking waitress said, startling us both. Just our luck to end up at the only Pizza Express where the waitstaff were trained for stealth combat situations. I quickly replayed our conversation in my head, but unless she’d actually been hiding in the next booth and listening in, we were in the clear.

 _But what about the other half of him?_ my unhelpful brain insisted on asking the rest of me. _The half that doesn’t want to end this right now? What does_ it _want?_

I put the thought aside for later and focused on ordering. I picked something from the light menu, figuring I’d better watch my waistline for the next few days. It wasn’t something I really thought about most of the time, so possibly a pasta bowl and salad was overkill (underkill?) for a woman on a diet, but at least I wouldn’t be over-full by the end of the evening. James ordered a huge pizza, obviously — I resolved to steal a couple of pepperoni — and a bottle of white wine for the table.

I asked a question with my eyebrows; he answered it when the waitress returned to her stealth fortress. “I need a drink,” he said. “It seems to have helped you out.”

I smiled. “I think I’ve burned off all the alcohol from earlier,” I said. “I’m running on pure adrenaline now.”

“Then we _both_ need a drink.” He nodded to himself.

“What were you saying before?” I asked.

“I don’t remember,” he said, looking confused. I thought about prompting him further, but decided it would sound weird. I didn’t even know why I cared: as long as we could both handle it tonight, we were sorted for the expo; what else was there to worry about?

The waitress returned a few minutes later with the wine, made a show of pouring some out so James could taste it — it’s just as well she didn’t ask me to do so: my palette was so inexperienced I was only willing to go fifty/fifty on being able to identify it as wine — and then left us to get quietly tipsy while we waited for our food.

  


  


Alcohol, thankfully, seemed to loosen James up. We polished off the first bottle in record time and ordered a second to go with dinner. By halfway through — me with my pile of pasta and leaves, James with his gargantuan pizza — we were both highly relaxed. And, just like back at the apartment, I was beginning to enjoy myself again.

So many things about being in public as a woman were interestingly different. The waitress smiled at me, the way waitresses do, but it was a different kind of smile. The other women in the restaurant were sort of neutral-friendly in a way that was, again, slightly different to what I was used to. When I was idly scanning the room while picking at my salad, a young woman at a nearby table gave me a serious-looking nod; not knowing at all what to do with that, I smiled at her and attempted a serious nod myself. She smiled back, so I don’t think I screwed up.

The men mostly just stared when they thought I wasn’t looking.

I wondered if I’d ever stared like that. I didn’t think so; I hadn’t been much in the habit of noticing people — unlike tonight, when the paranoid part of my brain, even though it had been partially defeated by alcohol and the continuing absence of consequences, still urged me to notice everyone and everything — and the few girls I’d dated had approached me, more or less out of the blue as far as I was concerned. And then, usually, broke it off after a few weeks or months; I was ‘nice’ but also ‘distant’ and, if I’m honest, really not all that sexually confident.

Of course, I might well have been making horny eyes at every woman who passed by me and been too oblivious to notice myself doing it. I resolved to watch out for that in future.

Eating with long hair probably would have been more of a challenge if I hadn’t spent a good few years at school with hair past my shoulders, so I was used to it. Tuck it behind your ears and/or eat out of the side of your mouth farthest from your part; job done. I hadn’t even intended to grow it out when I was younger, I just hadn’t paid attention to it, and I’d only cut it because I was getting bullied; hair was, to me, something that kept your ears warm.

Until today, I supposed. I realised I’d probably paid more attention to my appearance in the last — I glanced at my phone — seven hours than I had done in the preceding seven _years_ , and felt curiously ashamed of my past self. I resolved to do better after all this was over, and smiled at the idea that spending time as a woman would make me a better man.

“What are you thinking about?” James asked. Apparently he’d noticed that I was staring into the middle distance while making extremely heavy work of a pasta shell.

“Just how different things are,” I said.

“Different how?”

“Best not to answer that here,” I replied, indicating with a sweep of my eyes an entire restaurant who might have opinions we’d prefer to avoid giving them an opportunity to express.

“Wise,” James said. “So, do you think you can do it? The expo, I mean?”

I thought about it. The purpose of coming out to the restaurant had been to test for failure, and so far no-one had screamed or hit me or called the police or given any other indication they had discovered I was not what I appeared to be; I, for my part, had been quite panicked a lot of the time, but I was pretty sure I’d successfully hidden it.

“How do _you_ think I’m doing?” I asked. “Not my appearance; I mean, am I coming across like a normal person, not someone who’s scared out of h— her wits?” The pronoun nearly got me. I’d have to watch out for that.

“Honestly?” James said. “You’re doing great. I wouldn’t know you were having a hard time at all if you hadn’t had a go at me earlier.”

Another moment’s thought, just to be certain I was okay with it all. Or at least, okay enough to deal with it for a few days.

“Then yes. I can do it.” I grinned at him, suddenly feeling confident. “And I _will_ do it.”

James echoed my grin and grabbed my hand, squeezing it. I got the feeling he would have leapt over the table and hugged me if we weren’t in relatively polite company.

“Thank you _so_ much,” he said. “Your modelling fee is going to be _insane_.”

I liked the sound of that. “We can—” And then a thought that had been slowly travelling around my head asserted itself. “Shit,” I said, as the thought settled unpleasantly on the part of my brain that controlled my mouth.

“You look like you just thought of something nasty,” James said warily.

“We need to get the measurements to the tailoring company tonight, right?” I held up my phone. “It’s nearly eight pm!”

James’ expression crashed into mine. “Fuck,” he said.

“I know, right?”

“You get us an Uber back to my place,” James said, and started looking around for the stealth waitress. “I’ll get the bill.”

  


  


It was the same Uber driver. As I climbed into his back seat, draped once again in James’ jacket, I wondered how many embarrassing experiences it would take to finally kill me. He smiled and winked at me and I thought, yes, that wink might well have been what took me to the embarrassment LD50 threshold. Goodbye, cruel world, etc.

I couldn’t bring myself to be too bothered about it, though. I’d shot off a quick email to the tailors, who confirmed that work on the dresses wouldn’t start until morning, so any time before then would be fine, and I’d found Emily Swan’s measurements in my email archive, passed on by the agency. So, crisis averted: all I had to do was measure myself and then I could succumb to the pleasant alcoholic glow that was suffusing me from top to toe. In the face of such relief, a mere wink from a man who thought I was another man’s girlfriend couldn’t make much of a dent.

I sank into the seat cushions and felt very content.

“Did you have a good night, then?” the driver said.

James seemed to be over his nerves, and spoke up before I could. “Yes, thanks,” he said. “We had a business proposition to discuss, and it went well.”

“I thought you two were dating?” the driver said.

I winced, and thought quickly. “We are, but we just started, and I work for him,” I said, “so it’s awkward. And has the potential to get a bit legal.” Stuff a kernel of truth into your sack of lies, as they say.

“She’s my secretary,” James said, grinning at me.

My relief that he got the pronoun right — or right for tonight, anyway — was immediately eclipsed by my annoyance. His secretary? The sexist little arse.

“I’m his personal assistant,” I corrected him, and kicked him, out of sight of the driver.

James stuck his tongue out at me. I almost reached over to give him a playful slap before I remembered about the driver, who was watching us in the rear-view with obvious amusement, so I bottled it. When the driver looked away again, I raised a fist and brandished it where only James could see, a dire warning of future terrible punishments.

His answering grin was impossibly wide.

  


  


I nearly dropped the cloth measuring tape in the toilet.

I’d kicked off the heels when we got to James’ place, and as soon as I’d locked myself in the bathroom I’d shucked off the dress as well, taking great pleasure in hanging it up on the shower rail and then theatrically turning my back on it. It wasn’t that it was a bad dress, or that I even particularly disliked the idea of wearing dresses — after the last few hours, the stunning revelation that they were just tubes of fabric like everything else I’d worn my entire life, except with the holes in different places, had sunk in so gently that I didn’t notice it until I’d gotten naked — it was just that I felt more vulnerable when I wore them around other people. Because of the implications.

I then proceeded to discover, as I bent into impossible shapes while balancing against the side of the bath, squinting at the tailor’s web app on my phone screen and almost falling over, that I wasn’t actually able to get these measurements myself. Which meant I needed James’ help.

Even with the bum pads and the alarmingly tight knickers covering up all my traditionally naked parts — and a couple of extra naked parts I’d borrowed from Ben, farther up my body from the rest of them — I still _felt_ naked, and I very much did not want to be naked in front of James.

I threw the dress back on and unlocked the bathroom door. James was at his kitchen table, working at his laptop, but it didn’t look like his heart was in it. He looked sleepy. I joined him, pulling out a stool from the other end of the kitchen table and sitting cross-legged on it.

“All done?” he said, looking up from his work.

“Not yet,” I said hesitantly. “I, um, need to ask you for a favour.”

He smiled. “Considering what you’re doing for me — for our company — I’ll grant you any favour you like,” he said.

I blushed so hard I could feel it in my feet. “I need you to measure me,” I whispered. “I can’t do it on my own.”

He looked at me for a moment, a serious expression on his face. He seemed to be thinking, because after a moment he nodded to himself, as if one side of him had just won an argument against the other side.

“Okay,” he said.

I silently pushed my unlocked phone across the kitchen table. I found I couldn’t look at his eyes, so I watched his chin as he looked over the tailor’s web app. It guided you through the process from start to end, and also handily showed a woman’s silhouette with all the required measurements marked in white.

Some of them were in very delicate areas. I’m pretty sure I watched him realise this.

“Do you mind if I rifle through your ex’s stuff again?” I asked. “This dress is long enough that it’ll get in the way of some of the…” I trailed off. Some of the dot dot dot indeed.

He nodded, still frowning at my phone, so I escaped to his bedroom and quietly died for a few minutes.

Once I was done I found a nightie in the back of a drawer with his ex’s other abandoned stuff. It was a little bit cute and, when I tried it on, a little bit tight; quite a lot tighter than the maxi dress I’d borrowed, so either this woman was mis-sold on one item or another, or the drawer contained the leavings of more than one ex.

“How many girlfriends has he had…?” I muttered irritably to myself as I examined my reflection. It was tight, but not uncomfortably so, short enough that the thigh and leg measurements ought not to be a problem, and made of thin enough material that it probably wouldn’t affect any of the others. The bottom of the bum pads stuck out slightly, which made me extra-grateful I’d approved knee-length dresses for the girls at the expo.

It felt extremely strange, walking out of my boss’ bedroom in just a nightie, and I could tell he had the exact same revelation as soon as he saw me because his eyes widened. I stood in the middle of the living room, facing him, and said, “I’m ready.”

He took a few seconds to get moving, so I raised my arms into what seemed like a handy ‘measure me’ position. T-pose to assert dominance.

“You’ll tell me if I make you uncomfortable at any point, yeah?” he said.

I laughed. “If that’s the criterion, back away now,” I said. “But yeah, if I need a break, I’ll say.”

He dragged a stool over from the kitchen and placed the laptop carefully on top. He took another step towards me and unrolled the cloth tape with an apologetic look on his face.

“Start from the top?” he asked, and I nodded.

He held the tape up over my head and kept unrolling it until it hit the ground. He put a toe on the end to hold it steady and pulled it taut against my head. Then his hand was on my back, smoothing the tape out. His fingers ran up my spine from my coccyx to my neck, and I fought against the impulse to shiver.

“One-seventy centimetres,” he whispered, and reached over to his computer to enter it.

“I don’t need to know every number,” I said, struggling to maintain both head voice and composure. He was so _warm_. I’d never been as aware of anyone’s presence as I was at that moment.

He smiled, and placed a finger on my throat. He wrapped the tape around my neck, capturing his finger inside it, and pulled it tight enough for me to notice but not tight enough to hurt me. I was grateful. My arm, length and width in two places, and my shoulder span were all uneventful measurements to get, but then he circled back in front of me.

“I need to go around your chest,” he explained. “Around your—” and he just pointed at my breasts.

I resumed my T-pose, and nodded. It’s not as if the boobs were actually attached to me, after all.

He held the end of the tape against one of my nipples — well, the fake nipple on the end of the fake breast — and, unable to help himself, pushed gently against it. His eyes widened again.

“It feels so real,” he said.

“Have a lot of experience in that area, do you?” I said, sounding slightly more annoyed than I intended.

He smiled apologetically. “Some. Do you mind if I—?”

I had no idea what he was asking, so I just nodded. He reached up with his other hand and cupped my breast in his palm, weighing it like it was a newborn baby.

“Weird,” he said.

“ _You_ think it’s weird?” I said, feeling a little faint. I could feel his hand against my chest, my real chest, and the way he was taking the weight of the breast was having an interesting effect on my actual nipple, buried somewhere under there.

“No,” he said, “I mean, it’s weird that it’s not weird.” He shook his head, and repeated, “It feels so _real._ ”

I waved my arms slightly; they were getting tired. “Could you get the measurement so I can lower my arms?”

“Oh. Sure.”

He let my breast go and wrapped the tape around my torso, pulling it tight. As soon as he took a step backwards to record the result on his laptop I gratefully let my arms drop.

He nudged my wrist. “I still need your arms up a little,” he said. “I need to find the narrowest part of your waist.”

“It’ll be somewhere above the bum pads,” I said. “They give me hips as well.” Before the bum pads I’d been more or less a straight line up and down, like a pencil that was good with people but didn’t get a lot of third dates. He crouched down, which brought his head roughly level with my navel, and wrapped the cloth tape around my waist. He frowned, pinched the fabric of the nightie so it was as tight as it could get, and then pulled on the tape again.

I stood there for what seemed like an hour while he fussed with the tape, apparently having difficulty locating the exact narrowest part of my body. He had a palm flat on my belly, which was extremely distracting and probably had something to do with me losing track of time. When he was finally done I swayed a little, overcompensating for not having his steadying hand on my stomach any more.

“Sorry,” he said. “Should have warned you.”

I smiled, and felt my blush, which had been getting to know parts of my face it’d never visited before, deepen. “Not your fault,” I replied in a near-whisper. “I kind of zoned out.”

When he turned to record whatever number he’d finally come up with on his computer, I put a hand over the warm spot on my belly, but dropped it when he turned around again. I didn’t think he noticed.

Waist-to-neck and waist-to-floor were straightforward and didn’t induce any confusing sensations. I was grateful for the breather.

“You doing okay?” James asked, standing in front of me and stretching a leg. Clearly, crouching down in front of me had been tiring for him, too.

“I think so,” I said. I was getting that dry feeling you sometimes get when you’ve had a lot of wine — and assorted spirits — and the alcohol starts leaving your body. I wanted nothing more than to drink a pint of water and fall asleep in a dark, warm hole somewhere. That we still weren’t done with measuring and then I still had to scrape off all this feminine stuff, shower, and get an Uber home to my personal dark, warm hole before I could sleep was almost depressing.

“You sure?” He looked concerned, and reached out to me, grasping my upper arm in a gentle hand. I closed my other hand over his and smiled.

“I’m sure. Just tired.”

He grinned, and squeezed my arm. “Me too,” he said. “I feel like if I blink for too long right now I might not ever open my eyes again. Long day, huh?”

“Long day,” I agreed. “Now stop stalling and measure around my butt!”

I’d tried to inject some levity, but the truth is that when he crouched down in front of me again it was like someone hit me with defib paddles. He put his hand on my hip, which I could feel even through the pads, and wound the tape around first my hips and then around my bottom.

I think the last time another man touched my bottom was probably when I was born.

“Last two,” he said. Still crouching, he lifted the hem of the nightie just a little and wound the tape around my thigh. When his fingers met under my nightgown, I could feel both his hands together between my thighs. I felt my cock tighten. Trapped as it was inside those horrible knickers, it was an only slightly unpleasant mixture of anticipation and pain.

 _What exactly am I anticipating here?_ I asked myself as he leaned away to type the number into the computer.

He put the end of the tape under my foot.

“Step on that, please?” he said. I obliged.

Even after the thigh, I wasn’t prepared for what came next.

James ran the tape slowly up my leg, pressing it against the inside of my calf, then my knee. Slowly he inched it up my thigh, his thumb gliding over my skin all the way up to my crotch. He held the tape there with one hand, and with the other gently raised my foot so he could retrieve the other end. He pulled it taut, leaning in as he did so, his head resting on my hip, his breath warming the top of my thigh, the back of his hand pressing against my crotch.

I swear my dick stiffened. I have no idea if he felt it. I tried to freeze, but it was difficult because hot waves were cresting all over my body and the tides were dragging me down at the knees. I put out my hand to steady myself, aiming for his shoulder but finding his head, which I ended up pressing harder into my hip.

“Sorry,” I said. “I’m getting a bit wobbly.”

“S’okay,” James whispered. He released me and wound up the tape, sitting back on his ankles and granting me relief from some of the novel sensations that were battering me. He still had one hand on my thigh, which he gave a reassuring squeeze before he stood up, stepped back, and took his laptop back over to the kitchen table, presumably to enter the last measurement and then email the tailor.

Overwhelmed, I collapsed onto the nearest piece of furniture available, sinking full-length into the sofa cushions. My crotch burned and the fire was still catching all over my body, so I just lay there for a minute, too exhausted, too confused, too fucking _hot_ to pretend to myself or to James that something hadn’t just happened to me.

I didn’t know why I was responding this way. All I knew was that if, when his hand was on my crotch, he’d pulled my underwear aside and touched me more intimately, I would have let him.

James came over. He looked down at me, all six foot of him, a silhouette against the light from the lamp by the television.

“You okay?” he said.

I smiled weakly. “You ask that a lot,” I said.

He returned my smile. “I think it a lot,” he replied.

“I’ll survive,” I said. “Too much to drink, too much time trapped in these horrible knickers, and too little sleep, I think.”

He nodded, and walked over to his bar. “Speaking of drink… want something?”

I almost said yes, but I really did need to get out of James’ apartment, go home, and avoid thinking about things until the morning. The idea didn’t appeal, but the alternatives were difficult to contemplate.

“I can’t,” I said. “I have to go shower all this crap off and go home. I need my bed.”

For a moment, just a moment, a strange look might have crossed his face, but it was likely my imagination. I wouldn’t have been surprised if I’d started seeing pixies in the corner of the room, I was so tired.

He nodded and poured himself something, placing the glass on the coffee table.

“Before you sit down,” I said quickly, “can you help me up? I really need to get on with things.”

“Sure,” he said, and reached out an arm. I grasped it, pulled against it, and together we manoeuvred me into a standing position. I almost fell against him, but he caught me, and for a second we stood together, my arm in his, his other arm around my waist, steadying me.

“Thanks,” I said, gently pushing him away. Again with the flash of an expression I couldn’t read. I felt guilty, and stepped back into him, encircling him with my other arm and giving him a hug. “Really,” I said, “thank you. For doing the measurements. I nearly broke my brain against the bath trying to do them myself.”

He hesitated, and hugged me back. I really, really hoped he hadn’t felt my cock move when he was measuring me, just as I really, really hoped it hadn’t moved at all and it had just been my tired brain playing tricks on me. It can’t have been a particularly pleasant experience for him, being so close to me, dressed as I was, responding as I had been. If he’d even noticed.

I prayed that he hadn’t.

I gave him a grateful squeeze, and then stepped away. “Shower,” I said, pointing my thumb at the bathroom door. He nodded, sat down, and retrieved his drink.

I crossed the room and shut the bathroom door behind me, leaning against it and closing my eyes. I imagined him knocking back glass after glass, trying to forget what I’d just made him do. He’d been so kind about it, as well!

It would be just like him to suffer all that discomfort in silence and then get horribly drunk about it afterwards. I’d have to make sure to call him in the morning, make sure he got into work okay.

I hitched up the nightie, pulled down the knickers, and sat heavily on the toilet. I started looking around the bathroom while I put a thumb up to where the wig met my head, and thus I discovered that Ben had glued the damn thing on at the exact same time I realised the clothes I’d gone to work in that day were nowhere to be seen.

  


  


Ten minutes later and I was no closer to coming up with a way of getting home I was happy with. I wasn’t convinced I could get the wig off without damaging it or myself, even if I did find a solvent or whatever in Ben’s horrible luggage, so whether I stuck with the dress or borrowed something of James’ I’d be catching an Uber still looking, fundamentally, like I had all afternoon. The thought of being alone in a car with a man, without someone else there who I could pretend was my boyfriend, was not an appealing one.

I dropped the nightgown back over my head and unlocked the bathroom door. I’d have to ask James if I could sleep on his sofa.

When I got back to the living room area, however, James was sound asleep, horizontal on the sofa, exactly as I had been. His glass was mostly empty, but at some point he’d fetched whatever bottle he was working on. It sat, unstoppered, on the coffee table.

I walked over to the sofa and crouched down next to him.

“Hey,” I said quietly. “James?” No response. “I can’t get the wig off, and I can’t go home alone like this. I need to stay the night.” Still no response. Damn.

I couldn’t leave him that way, but there was no way in hell I was going to try to undress him and drag him to bed. I sighed, stood back up, went to his bedroom, and searched around for something approximating a linen closet. Eventually I found where he kept the spare blankets and carried one out to where he was still asleep, snoring lightly. I draped it over him, feet to chest, and folded his free arm over it to keep it in place.

Touching him seemed to wake him, if only a little. His eyes half-opened and he gazed at me, smiling broadly.

“Hi,” he said.

“Hi,” I whispered, returning his smile. “I need to stay the night. Is that okay?”

His smile broadened. “O’course,” he said, slurring a little. “Stay as long as you need.”

His eyes closed again. I patted him on the shoulder, and was about to stand up when his hand suddenly grasped mine. Before I could react he’d leaned forward and kissed me wetly on the mouth, his half-open eyes looking directly into mine. Then, just as quickly, he let me go and fell back onto the sofa, eyes closing.

“G’night, beautiful,” he muttered.

I wondered who he thought I was in that moment. Perhaps one of the ex-girlfriends whose clothes I’d been appropriating all evening?

I busied myself tidying up a little, stoppering his bottle and replacing it on the bar, checking his emails to make sure he’d sent the measurements to the tailor and closing down his laptop, turning off the lights and making sure the front door was locked.

I staggered into his bedroom, fatigue biting at every limb, and fell onto his bed. I didn’t even try to remove the bra or the padding, I just pawed at the covers until I’d pulled them over me, and before I could think another coherent thought I’d drifted off, my head deep in James’ pillow, surrounded by his smell.


	3. Chapter 3

We were back in the restaurant, but we were alone, our dark little booth at the centre of a pool of light that encompassed the entire universe in a few square metres. I was wearing the dark blue maxi dress again — I didn’t remember putting it back on — and James was wearing a suit I’d seem him wear a few times when he had to impress important people: charcoal jacket and trousers, a shirt that was nearly-but-not-quite white, and a maroon tie that complemented his deep brown eyes.

There was no food on the table, just some wine, and he already had his glass raised. He was looking at me, smiling, and I felt myself smile back, felt it in the warmth of my cheeks and the softness of my belly. He reached across the table with his spare hand and I gratefully took it in mine, encircling his wrist with my fingers.

“Are you having a good night?” he asked me.

I didn’t answer right away. Maintaining our eye contact I drained my glass. I felt the alcohol spread through my body, suffusing my limbs, and I stretched out under the table. My ankle grazed his, like it had in the car, and I lazily kicked off my heel, wanting to feel my skin against his. I gently touched my toes against his leg, under the material of his trousers, and slowly let my foot run the length of his shin, enjoying the sensation of his leg hair tickling my toes.

“I am,” I said.

My empty wine glass was gone, but it was okay because his was, too. I leaned forward on the table, close enough that he could reach out and touch my face if he wanted to. He made me wait a few seconds — he was grinning, teasing me; I wanted to reach forward and grab him, to _make_ him touch me — before his hand finally caressed my cheek.

And then James’ fingers were in my hair, my real hair, not that awful wig, and he ran them through the length of it, from the top of my head down past my shoulders. He played with the strands of hair that danced around the tops of my breasts, his fingers stroking my chest, and for a moment I closed my eyes, releasing the hand I held in mine in an instant of complete contentment.

I felt a tension at my neck, and I realised he’d cupped my head in his hand and was guiding me forward, towards him. I let myself be led. He leaned forward, and the last thing he said before he kissed me was, “Hello, beautiful.”

I kissed him back.

His hand lowered from my neck to the small of my back, drawing me closer, and I arched my back to meet him, standing on tip-toes, so we could keep kissing as we stood. He leaned down and the disparity between our heights was so great that he nearly dipped me. Had he always been so much taller than me? The table and the restaurant were gone, might never have existed; it was just us in the pool of light, kissing, holding each other, falling as if in slow-motion into his bed.

As we fell I peeled his jacket from his shoulders, undid his tie, and started to unbutton his shirt. He waited until I was done and then lifted my dress over my head and discarded it. He shrugged off his shirt, I opened his belt, he unclasped my bra and let it fall away. He was underneath me now, haloed in silk sheets, kicking away his trousers and gently sliding my underwear down my legs. As he looked up at me his hand returned to the small of my back and he pulled me down with him.

We kissed again, a starfish of limbs, and he briefly caressed my face before his other hand traced its path from my back, across my buttocks, around my hip, and into my crotch. I bit his lip as his fingers entered me and I woke.

  


  


The first thing I was aware of, before I even opened my eyes, was James’ smell. The whole bed smelled like him — I wondered sourly how often he changed his sheets — and while it was far from unpleasant, it was a little overwhelming. Still, I was warm and comfortable, lying on my side, curled up under the covers, my right arm tucked under a voluminous pillow.

I could stay here a while, I decided. I felt dried out, almost dessicated, with that faint afterglow of pain that means you got lucky and burned off most of your hangover while you were still asleep. I’d have to get up and deal with that sooner or later, and have a piss especially, but there was no immediate need to move.

My left wrist twitched, and felt a little sore. I recalibrated my senses a little and stretched the fingers of my left hand. They wetly tickled the insides of my thighs.

It took a few more seconds for me to finish fully spooling up to something approaching full consciousness.

Slowly, carefully, trying not to wipe it against the sheets, I extricated my left hand from between my legs and inspected it. It was definitely damp, but it didn’t smell like I’d wet myself; in fact, it smelled like…

I don’t think I’ve ever got out of bed faster in my life. I flung the covers away, heard them take out something electronic-sounding on the other bedside table, but didn’t see what it was because I couldn’t take my eyes off my wet fingers. Standing naked — except not; I was still wearing that nightie, those horrible knickers, the stupid bum pads, that slightly too-tight bra and that awful wig — I reached down slowly with my clean right hand and felt my crotch.

Inside my underwear, my cock was still pinned tight against me. It felt like it had tried to get hard but couldn’t, but that hadn’t apparently stopped it from ejaculating and (probably) ruining Ben’s awful fucking knickers.

At least there was a bright side.

I sat down heavily on the bed, regarding myself in the mirror: the hair; the tits; the nightgown. What had felt kind of glamorous at times last night, once I’d (mostly) got over my fear of discovery, just looked stupid in the cold light of the morning. What was I doing?

I groaned as I realised I was committed to another four days of this shit.

Which made me think about the Consumer Electronics Expo. Which made me think about the dresses they’d probably already started work on, and which I’d have to wear. Which made me think about the measurements I’m made James take, working over my as-far-as-I-was-concerned nearly naked body from a distance of inches.

Which made me think about the dream.

What the _fuck_ was I doing?

  


  


**Ben, you horrible man, why the fuck didn’t you tell me you glued the wig on? I didn’t know how to get it off without breaking it so I’m still wearing the damn thing and I have to go to work!!!**

I threw my phone down on James’ bed and glared at it. I wasn’t normally a three-exclamation-point guy, but it’d been that kind of morning. My vague hope that it had been loosened by a night’s sleep, spent tossing and turning, writhing and — _don’t think about it!_ — doing other things, had been in vain; the wig was still firmly attached to my forehead. If we didn’t need it for the trade show I would already have hacked off the stupid lacy front bit with James’ toenail clippers (which were on his bedside table, for some reason).

I couldn’t stop thinking about the dream. Rather, I couldn’t stop _not_ thinking about the dream. It _had_ to be because it’d been a long time since my last girlfriend, because I’d spent the last year in close quarters with mostly only James, because spending half a day dressed as a woman had messed with my head. The way he’d leaned up from his sofa and kissed me, before I went to bed, _had_ to have planted something in my subconscious that then played out in my dreams.

It had been a nice way to wake up, for sure, but only because it was nice to feel desirable after such a long time single. Even if his kiss and his compliment had been fake — in his half-awake state last night, James had clearly thought I was one of his many exes, or perhaps some girl he had a crush on — they had obviously been real enough for my lonely brain to latch onto and percolate on overnight.

James didn’t want me, and I didn’t want him. I just wanted to be wanted.

My phone buzzed. Ben had replied to my text.

**It’s water-based glue, idiot! Soap and water is all you need. Just get your fingers or a paper towel all soapy and rub gently under the lace under the fringe until it comes off. Didn’t you find the instructions in the case?**

Me: **Oh. I didn’t see them.**

Ben: **I only used a little bit of glue. A hot shower with the shower cap on should have done it if it wasn’t ready to just pull off at the end of the night. Didn’t you find the shower cap I left in the bathroom?**

I sighed at my own stupidity, and replied, **Didn’t see that, either.**

Ben: **OH COME ON**

Me: **It’s my first time crossdressing! I can’t be expected to know this stuff!**

Ben: **It’s 2019. And you work in tech. You didn’t think to Google it?**

Me: **No. I was really tired and still kind of drunk when we got back in.**

Ben: **…YOU WENT OUT TOGETHER??????**

I needed to develop better habits when it came to information other people definitely didn’t need to know.

Me: **Please forget I said that.**

Ben’s reply was practically instant: **Never.**

Me: **Hey, and where the fuck are my CLOTHES?**

Ben: **Sorry. James asked me to take them. Immersion therapy kind of thing. I’ll bring them when I swing by the office later.**

Me: **What am I supposed to wear to work? I have nothing else here.**

Ben: **You’re telling me THAT was your best outfit? Girl, I feel REALLY bad for you now.**

I was about to start work on the snarkiest and most unpleasant response I could generate without the assistance of coffee, but my phone buzzed again, and when I read Ben’s text I almost dropped it.

**WAIT DO YOU MEAN YOU STAYED THE NIGHT AT HIS PLACE??????????**

I resolved to find out where James’ rich family kept their inevitable nuclear bunker and go live in it for a few years until all this blew over.

  


  


I looked weird in the wig without the bra, the nightie and the knickers. My legs and crotch were still smooth — I wondered how long a full wax lasted, and decided to Google it later — and so was my face, because I was, as mentioned, never a champion beard-grower. Naked but for the wig, I looked like I belonged in one of those Calvin Klein ads next to all the other androgynes. For the hell of it, I posed like a model for exactly three seconds before I felt stupid and turned away from the mirror.

I threw on one of James’ robes and left the bedroom, hoping he was still asleep. He tended to take alcohol pretty hard, so going by past form I could expect to have the place more or less to myself for at least another hour. I tip-toed over to the sofa and found him still snoozing under the blanket I’d covered him in the night before, and almost smiled at how peaceful he looked, before I remembered he’d stolen my clothes and dressed me as a woman and kissed me and had therefore committed a terrible crime against my subconscious. Apparently unsatisfied with just the dream, my subconscious started spinning up again as I looked down at him.

The little fucker.

I rummaged in James’ trunk for special wig-removing soap, or some garden shears, or something, and found nothing of the sort. I also didn’t find any wig-removal instructions, so I got to add to my list of grievances. In the end I settled for a bit of dishwashing soap on a sponge and headed back to the bedroom to get the damn wig off.

It was insultingly easy to remove.

I charged out of the bedroom and into the bathroom, locked the door, and started the shower water heating up while I dealt with my full bladder. I was done before I realised I’d sat on the toilet instead of standing.

  


  


“Headed to the gym this morning?” the Uber driver asked, jolting me out of my early-morning daze. Even after a good night’s sleep my brain wasn’t at its best before coffee; in its current only-just-not-hungover state, and considering everything else that had happened, I was rather proud that my brain was managing to keep my body’s vital functions going _and_ get me to the car without tripping over my own feet.

I’d stolen the only clean clothes I could find in James’ room that I could get to fit me, which had been jogging bottoms with the drawstring pulled as tight as it could go, and a hoodie. I felt dwarfed in them, and a little silly. His trainers didn’t fit very well, either, but at least I could wear three pairs of (stolen) socks and do the laces up extra tight.

It occurred to me, rather too late to be able to do anything about it, that I might have ended up with the driver from last night given the way my luck was going lately, but a quick check confirmed that this was definitely not the same car and definitely not the same driver; he’d have to have switched a compact hatchback for a huge saloon and also changed race, which aren’t things people tend to do overnight.

I smiled at him in relief, remembered he’d asked a question, opened my mouth to reply, and had a coughing fit. I was _so_ dehydrated. Normally after so much alcohol I would have had a pint of water before bed and another after waking up. I suppose I had a lot on my mind.

“Oops, sorry love,” he said. “Just making conversation. If you’re in a bad way, don’t worry about it.”

My half-awake brain took a moment to register what he’d just called me, and another moment to get my reaction under control. What was going on? I tried to sneak a look at myself in the car window, suddenly afraid that I hadn’t taken the wig off after all, or that it had chased after me and latched back on like a face-hugger from Alien, but the glass was misted up. I surreptitiously reached up and felt around the back of my head, unable to dispel the notion that I might have absent-mindedly reattached the wig somehow, but there was only my usual shaggy mess of hair. I was ordinary, everyday Alex, exactly as ignorable as always, just in some hilariously-oversized gym clothes.

I probably had misheard him. That was all it was. It made no sense for him to gender me that way when I looked like this. Still, I decided, there was no sense risking it by talking and collapsing the wave function, so I smiled at him instead, trying not to look as nervy as I felt, and tapped my neck to indicate that I had a sore throat.

He nodded. “Understood,” he said. “Sorry you’re not feeling well.”

I gave this guy a five-star review as well.

  


  


The office was blissfully free of James-shaped distractions. I’d tersely informed him via text, from my Uber, that I was headed to the office alone. My guilty conscience got the better of me shortly after I sat down at my desk, so I sent a follow-up text advising him to drink lots of water and take the painkillers I’d left out on the side.

There was still a lot of organisational detritus to deal with before the expo the next day, and meticulously and thoroughly dealing with every little bit of it served pretty well to distract me from the fact that the expo was _the next day_ , and I was less than twenty-four hours away from having to do the model gig for three whole days. I thirstily drained my water bottle and worked out some of my feelings on the poor, defenceless computer keyboard. It was tough, though, and it could handle it: James was a mechanical keyboard nerd and had outfitted every PC in the office with these clacky things that were built like tanks. And on the off-chance that my mood did make it all the way through my keyboard and out the other side I could just swap it out with one from another desk and it’d be six months before anyone noticed, which was long enough even for someone who felt as much like shit as I did to make an escape.

It was only when the phone rang and I answered it with the tortured wail of an early adolescent whose voice had started breaking that I remembered I was supposed to be practicing head voice. I struggled through the call, trying to maintain something close to my normal voice, and was deeply irritated when the caller signed off with, “Thanks, er, mate.”

I slammed the phone back in its cradle, closed my eyes, and went through my warmup exercises. My vowels went okay, and my humming was fine, but when I tried to transition to a real, spoken sentence, the teenage squawking returned. Frustrated, I called up the voice recorder app on my phone and recorded myself, then listened to the recordings Ben and I had made during our practice session. Then I listened to myself from just now again.

I sounded worse than I had done when I’d first started.

The phone rang again. I let it ring, glaring at it until it stopped; I’d pick up the voicemail some time when I wasn’t freaking out.

James arrived about half an hour later, when I was finally getting back something approaching the voice I’d had when Ben and I had started practicing. Without the relaxing influence of alcohol, it was difficult to retain head voice without cracking; the fantasies I’d entertained — of just re-obtaining the proper voice with a bit of practice and then talking like I used to for the rest of the day — had evaporated, and I was in even more of a bad mood when James sauntered in.

“Good morning!” he said, smiling at me, obnoxiously cheerful.

“It absolutely is not,” I said, glaring at him, and losing my voice on the last word. “Fuck!” I said, and hit the desk with the flat of my hand. I started to massage it; that had _hurt._

“Alex, are you okay?” James said, walking over to me, suddenly all concerned.

I couldn’t take it any more. “No, I am fucking _not_ okay, and would you stop _fucking_ asking me that!” His wounded expression just made me want to attack him with a stapler. “I’m scared half to death! I’m going to have to be a fucking booth babe for three whole days, I’m going to have to wear those stupid fucking underpants Ben forced on me for three days, and I’m going to have to _talk like this_ for three days, except right now I can’t even do _that_ part right!” I blinked back the tears I was sure were coming. “I’m fucking _useless!_ ”

“Alex—” he started, putting a gentle hand on me. I swatted it away.

“ _Don’t touch me!_ ” I yelled, without really meaning to.

He raised both hands in the air and stepped back, looking like I’d slapped him. I deflated, feeling like an arsehole, and before he could apologise I stood up and took a step back myself, to establish that even though I was about to walk back most of what I just said, we weren’t going to hug it out or anything.

“Sorry,” I said. “I had a crappy night—” a lie, “—and I _am_ scared, and I’m having trouble getting the voice back. I’m sure you can tell.” I still sounded like a hormonal teenager. “It’s all a bit much, but it’s not your fault. I agreed to this, and there’s so much at stake. Your future; this company’s future; mine. I’m just… it’s a lot.”

“Alex,” he said (he was saying my name a lot, lately), “nothing that’s at stake is as important as you. _Your_ health; _your_ safety.” He took a deep breath. “We can still cancel, or go ahead with just one girl. Now that I say that, it doesn’t even sound that bad of an—”

“No,” I interrupted. “I’ll do it. We need this to work. I need this to work. No half-measures or compromises. I— I’m going to need some space. Personal space, you know?” I swallowed, and hoped what I was going to say next wasn’t too revealing. “I… can’t do the kind of thing we did last night again. I thought it was okay at the time—” I smiled, briefly, unable to help it, “—but it kind of messed with my head, after.”

A sympathetic look shuffled onto James’ face. “Nightmares?”

I looked at the floor and didn’t answer.

“Look, Alex,” he said, taking a hesitant step towards me and then realising what he was doing and stepping back again, “take my office. Go relax in there, get your voice sorted, and chill. I’ll take your desk and deal with anything that’s still left over to do.”

“Are you sure? There’s a lot—”

“I’ll be fine.” He smiled. “You didn’t always work with me, you know, and I had to get things done without you. It was horrible—” the smile turned into a teasing grin that I unwillingly returned, “—but I managed.”

Still, I couldn’t stop myself being a little concerned. The details weren’t really his thing; he was a big picture kind of guy. “You’re really sure?”

“Go!” He made shooing gestures. “Go to my office, practice, play some Solitaire or World of Warcraft or something. I’ve got this. And so have you.”

  


  


I finally got ‘my’ voice back. Well, ‘Girl Alex’s’ voice, I guess. I’d had very little to think about in James’ office while I was running through my vocal exercises, and futzing about on the internet (a vague memory of something Ben had said about YouTube tutorials had me watching videos on basic makeup technique and, after falling down on of those internet rabbit holes that are so dangerous when you’re bored, some videos by transgender women on voice training, which were actually pretty helpful) wasn’t all that involving. ‘Girl Alex’ had emerged in my head as a semi-separate entity, someone who I had briefly become the previous day, and someone who I would attempt to inhabit again during the expo. It made sense, if I was trying to create this alternate me, this version of me as a woman, that she would be a little pervasive. She’d dream of kissing some guy — the only confirmed-straight man she’d ever met — and respond to it in a way that was natural to her, right? All of this… this _afterglow_ was just her spilling over into the rest of me a little.

I imagined a room in my head for Girl Alex to live when I didn’t need her, firmly shut the door, and continued with my exercises; having regained her voice, I didn’t want to lose it again. I was just pleased I’d managed it without the relaxing influence of alcohol, because Girl Alex seemed to like a drink more than Regular Alex and I really didn’t want to encourage her.

On the instruction of one of the videos, I tried singing in head voice. It wasn’t bad! My voice was getting stronger and clearer as I found the limits of my head voice and stretched them. I’d always liked to sing, and I’d never had much of an issue singing along with the women’s parts, but obviously I’d sounded like a guy when I did it. It was a little easier now, with the practice I’d been getting, to hit those higher notes with clarity, bouncing them off the top of my mouth instead of struggling to raise them out of my throat; it wasn’t that my range was expanding, particularly, but my singing voice had always gone to shit if I went much above middle C unless I flipped into falsetto. Well, not any more! Recording myself and listening back, I wasn’t going to give Adele anything to worry about, but I sounded more androgynous than I used to. If it had been someone else on the recording, you could have told me they were a woman or a man and I would have believed either.

If nothing else, I was going to come out of this a better singer.

While I was having fun singing along with a YouTuber who was performing both the male and female parts of A Whole New World from Aladdin, James happened to walk by the glass door to his office and looked in. I instinctively cringed a little, embarrassed to be caught singing, but he gave me a grin and a thumbs-up and I smiled back at him. I felt like I owed him another apology; he was doing his best to help me and I’d been acting… weird around him. He’d never been anything but kind to me, as long as we’d known each other.

He made swigging motions through the glass, and I nodded. He returned a minute or so later with a bottle of water from the vending machine in the lobby.

“I got the voice back,” I told him, in the voice.

“I heard!” he said, passing the water over. “You sound great!” I opened the bottle and downed half in one go; I was still tremendously thirsty. God, it felt good. “You know,” he added, a little hesitantly, “you look kind of—”

“I know,” I interrupted, grimacing and running a hand through my hair. Even though I’d only worn the wig for a single night, it still felt a minor novelty to have just normal-length hair. I had kind of a floppy fringe and a shaggy cut, but it still looked relatively smart when I brushed it. My hair had a natural wave, so it looked okay despite my neglect, even if it wasn’t fashionable; my last haircut had been shortly after I started at MCAC, one of those generic short-back-and-sides cuts barbers give you when you sit in the chair and shrug, and not really intended to be grown out to the extent I’d let it.

I looked in the semi-reflective surface of one of James’ computer monitors, which had gone into sleep mode; great, I looked like a teenager again. A younger teenager than usual, I mean. “This is why I don’t normally shave,” I said. “I look like I should be doing my GCSEs or something.”

“It’s not that bad,” James protested. “You don’t look like a kid, anyway, not really, you look more like…” He trailed off, so I prompted him with an expansive water bottle gesture. “You don’t look like a kid,” he repeated, sounding firm.

“Thanks,” I said, deciding to take some solace in that.

“Oh, hey,” he said, “I cancelled the extra rooms at the hotel since we have two fewer models now. And I followed up with the tailors; one of us can pick up the dresses on the way out of town in the morning. There’ll be six; three each, one per day, right?” I nodded. He listed the other tasks, major and minor, that he’d taken off my hands that morning, and I confirmed he’d done the right thing for each of them, or close enough to the right thing that I could fix it on the day. I was almost proud.

“So,” he finished, “with all that done, we can both rest up for a bit.”

“ _You_ can,” I smirked. “I’ve been resting for the last two hours. Actually,” I remembered, regaining a small sample of my earlier foul mood, “why did you tell Ben to take my clothes last night?”

He looked sheepish. “Oh, sorry,” he said, but he didn’t sound apologetic at all; more like I’d caught him out. “I just thought it’d help to, you know, stay in character.”

I fixed him with a stern glare. “That’s your first and last warning for taking my agency away,” I said.

“I promise not to do anything like that again,” he said, actually managing to seem contrite this time. I nodded, somewhat mollified. “Say,” he added, looking thoughtful, “do you want to grab some lunch together?”

I _was_ hungry. “Sure,” I said, but then realised: “I can’t. I’ve got to keep practicing this voice; if I drop it to go to lunch I might undo some of my hard work today.”

“Well, you actually—”

I held up a finger. “Whatever you’re thinking: no,” I said. He looked like he was about to say something else, but his desk phone started ringing. Keeping my warning finger in place, I hit the speaker button with my elbow.

“McCain Applied Computing,” James said, leaning over the desk and pushing my finger aside. Then he grinned and hooked his finger around mine, holding it in place. “This is James McCain.”

“Hi!” said an unfamiliar woman on the line. “This is Emily Swan, from Hammond’s? I’m supposed to come over this afternoon to go over the promotional details, and I wanted to confirm the address.”

 _Fuck_ , we both mouthed at each other.

“Absolutely, Miss Swan,” James said, putting on his friendly phone voice. “I’ll pass you over to Alex Brewer, my assistant. She’ll be running our booth with you over the weekend.” He mouthed, _I’m sorry._

I extricated my warning finger from James’ grip and raised a much ruder one. “Hi,” I said, in Girl Alex’s voice, hoping my practice had been as good as I thought it was, “this is Alex Brewer. How are you, Miss Swan?”

“I— I’m fine, I just— I’m sorry, I thought you were a man,” Emily Swan said, opening up the floor of James’ office and dumping us both into hell. James actually physically doubled over and put his head in his hands, and I wondered if he was going to try and kick himself. It didn’t matter if he failed; I decided to kick him later, for both of us.

For a moment I despaired that she’d clocked my voice, and then I realised she must have been forwarded my email conversations with her boss. “Don’t worry about it,” I said, to stall, and quickly unlocked my phone and scrolled through the emails. Thankfully, in every email I identified myself as ‘Alex Brewer’ or just ‘Alex’; the only time anyone used ‘Mr’ was when Frank Hammond had been writing back. I double-checked and, for sure, if someone forwarded you the whole conversation, you’d come away with the _impression_ I was a man — and what an impression; what a man! — but, crucially, I never actually said it. “I’m thinking your boss told you that? Men assume that a lot in this business. If I’m never going to meet them in person it usually goes smoother just to never correct them.”

“I get it,” she said. “Can I confirm your address?” I rattled it off, and she promised to be no more than two hours.

“Fuuuuuuuuuuck,” I said, after she hung up.

“It’s okay,” James said, “it’s okay, it’s okay, it’s okay. Just change into your stuff, and it’ll be a dry run for the weekend.”

“What stuff?” I snapped. “I didn’t bring it with me! And I didn’t instantly become a makeup expert overnight, either. _And_ , even if I did bring it, all of Ben’s clothes are _drag queen clothes!_ ”

James hesitated for a second. “Okay,” he said again, and whipped his phone out of his pocket. He dashed off what was probably a text, and then marched over to the small safe that was on the same table as his (modest, work-appropriate) bar. “Ben was going to come over later, anyway,” he said as he fiddled with the safe, “to go through our plans for the expo.” I gave his back a piercing look which he obviously detected because he explained, “He’ll be your makeup artist and general gopher for the whole trip. I decided it’d be better to keep Sophie out of the loop.” Sophie was James’ cousin, and our original makeup artist for the expo. I guess I was glad I wouldn’t have to explain to her what I was doing in a dress; to be honest, in all the excitement, I’d forgotten she’d been involved at all.

James handed me a tiny leather wallet which contained what turned out to be the company credit card. I took it and let my eyebrows ask the question.

“Assuming Ben agrees,” James said, “which he ought to for what we’re paying him, he’ll meet you at my place, do you up, and you can both go buy something office-suitable. You’re going to need something to wear this weekend when you’re not in the booth babe getup, anyway.”

It hadn’t occurred to me that I’d need to be Girl Alex off the clock, but James was right: even if, as I planned, I went straight from the show floor to my hotel room and locked myself in with Netflix and the minibar until the next morning it would be prudent to provide for other eventualities. I’d always thought of myself as a pretty smart guy, but the last day or so had kept coming at me with things I just hadn’t thought about.

“Okay,” I said, sighing and extricating myself from James’ wonderfully comfortable (and expensive) office chair, “I’ll get moving.” What choice did I have?

“A moment,” James said, and fumbled in his pocket. He pulled out his keys, removed one of them from the ring, and handed it to me. “You can keep it,” he insisted. “It’s spare.”

“Oh,” I said.

I was saved from having to say anything more intelligent than that by the phone. James waved me out of the office and picked it up with his other hand.

“Ben!” he said. “We have a slight Alex emergency. Can you meet her at my place? She needs to look ‘office presentable’…”

The barrage of pronouns was all the incentive I needed to escape the room.

  


  


The Uber driver _definitely_ thought I was a woman, which was actually convenient because I’d forgotten to drop the voice. I didn’t know what else it meant but I decided, for the duration of this mini-crisis, to put all those worries in my pocket to think about later. Talking to him with no wig or makeup on, in jogging clothes, and being seen as a woman anyway just because of the voice was a pretty timely confidence-booster, so I gave him a five-star review.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I changed the year mentioned in this chapter from 2020 to 2019, because a) I'm GREAT at continuity, shut up, and b) Alex is way too sensible to go out in a dress during a pandemic. Full plague doctor gear or nothing.
> 
> I could have set it in 2021, I suppose, but I'm only 90% sure about my prediction that we'll be in an Immortan Gove situation by then, and I'll be super embarrassed if I ended up wrong about exactly which Tory ends up controlling our access to the big elevated pipes that cover us in water.


	4. Chapter 4

When I got to the apartment I spent a useful minute or so praising my past self for remembering to throw the horrible stretchy underwear I’d made such a mess of in James’ washing machine before I left for work. The dry cycle hadn’t been done all that long by the time I skipped happily over to the machine and extracted the sordid little knickers, and I had a moment akin to vertigo as I realised it had been only a bit more than three hours since I’d woken up in my boss’ bed after spending the night dreaming about him.

It wasn’t even midday yet. I could remember whole _weeks_ that had passed in a flash; suddenly my life was happening in bizarre, technicolour detail.

God, the place was a tip. I navigated the (small) mess I’d left behind that morning and the (far larger) mess James seemed to live in all the time, and made it through the bedroom without stepping on anything gross. There was crusty underwear scattered about the place like landmines. Very glamorous! I slung on the bra, bum pads and knickers, inserted the fake boobs — cold! — and put on the heels from last night, to practice. I considered putting on the wig and/or practicing makeup, but decided I’d probably end up doing irreparable harm to the wig and/or my face if I got anything wrong, so I retired to the couch to fiddle with my phone and wait for Ben.

Five minutes’ later, still waiting, and filled with a need to be _doing something_ instead of just sitting around, I started on the washing-up. It turned out James got an awful lot of takeout meals for one, which I thought was kind of sad; and he left the evidence glued to various plates and bowls, which was disgraceful. I managed to deal with most of the more recent detritus and left everything else to soak in soapy water. I could have sworn some of this stuff was more than a week old! I found an untouched roll of trash bags on top of the microwave, unrolled one, and set about demolishing the mountain of old takeout boxes in the corner and exhuming the teabag graveyard by the sink, then marched around the rest of the apartment, looking for trash to add to my grim little collection.

In his bedroom, after scooping up a couple of empty tubes of moisturising lotion — there was an array of them on his bedside table, for some reason — I saw myself in his mirror again, and laughed: I was in heels and underwear, carrying a trash bag, scurrying around my boss’ flat like I was his bloody maid! I grinned at myself and mock-curtseyed in the bedroom mirror, like I’m sure no maid in history ever has, then dropped the bag and retrieved the bathrobe I’d borrowed earlier. If there was one thing I didn’t need, it was snarky commentary, whether from my own hindbrain or from Ben.

Where _was_ Ben?

I took the trash bag back out into the main room and dumped it by the front door, then returned to the bedroom to fix the mess of sheets I’d left behind that morning and rescue the alarm clock I’d apparently knocked onto the floor at some point. I was rounding up dirty underwear to fill the washing machine when I heard a key turn in the lock and rushed back out to the main room, almost falling over on the heels I’d almost forgotten I was wearing.

Ben looked remarkably together, considering I was pretty sure he’d been out later than we had last night, although he hadn’t shaved. I thought the stubble coming in around his carefully-trimmed beard kind of suited him.

“Alex!” he said, sounding happy to see me.

“Ben!” I replied, trying to echo the sentiment. But then I saw the luggage he manhandled through the front door — bigger than the one he’d left here! — and a percentage of my goodwill evaporated. “ _More_ torture devices?”

“Hm? Oh, this is all mostly for the weekend; I had to do a roundup since I probably won’t have another chance before tomorrow. No torture devices at all, I promise.” I narrowed my eyes at him. “But there _is_ something James and I talked about…” he added.

“What is it?”

He looked pained. “I’m not sure if you’re going to like it,” he said. “It’s sort of good and bad. From your perspective, I mean.”

“Just tell me,” I said impatiently.

  


  


Hair extensions. I couldn’t believe I was doing this.

Ben had offered me the choice of extensions or of glueing that bloody wig to my head for the whole weekend. It hadn’t taken me long to make up my mind — the wig cap had been extremely uncomfortable when I’d woken up with it on this morning and I didn’t want to imagine how hot and sweaty and gross my scalp would get after several days, and extensions eliminated the possibility that my wig could come unstuck in public and expose me — but, all the same, the step into the hairdressers Ben had shuttled me to wasn’t a step I’d imagined taking even _after_ I started my dubious new career as a dress-up doll for my boss. Hair extensions were a step beyond, ‘Just slap on this skirt and smile at people,’ which, yes, was a huge simplification of what we were planning to do with me this coming weekend, but when I needled the idea from every angle I could think of, I came up with several solid, practical reasons why it was a good idea and mere emotional reasons why it wasn’t.

I needed to talk to James about it all, though. This whole process — new hair and clothes instead of borrowed stuff — was starting to become more like a top-to-bottom makeover than anything temporary. I worried, hopefully uncharitably, that he planned on persuading me to do this all over again whenever we had something new to sell, for as long as we could get away with it, which was probably a good couple more years, given the slow pace of my masculine development. Knowing that I was almost definitely just being paranoid, I started marshalling arguments in my head as I sat in the salon chair that would keep me out of dresses in the future. It was good to be prepared; recent experience had shown me that if I just walked back into the office without a properly-rehearsed litany against crossdressing (“I will face my dress. I will _not_ permit it to pass over me. I will throw it in the trash and run away to watch sport with people who sweat a lot.”) he’d turn those awful rich-boy puppy-dog eyes on me and I’d find it hard to say no.

The whole process was due to take about two-and-a-half hours, which information nearly had me out of the salon and down the street, if only because I’d still be in the chair when the girl from the agency arrived. James had talked me down over the phone, insisting he’d be well able to make a start on talking her through everything she needed to know, and that it was more important I be both as comfortable and as discovery-proof as I could be for the trade show; extensions, especially this sort, beat even a glued-on wig on both fronts, which lined up annoyingly well with my own conclusions. I still didn’t like the idea of James talking the girl — I’d forgotten her name, and didn’t much feel like looking it up at this point — through what she needed to know about our product and our goals for it, although I couldn’t really point to why. I imagined them both running off, marketing materials unstudied, and adding her clothes to James’ ex-girlfriend drawer at some undetermined point in the future.

They’d colour-matched my hair, after praising how thick and wavy it was — easier to hide the tips of the extensions in — and two of the salon staff, a guy called Warren with short, dark hair, delicate fingers and very pale skin, and a woman, Selina, worked me over while Ben made some phone calls. We weren’t going to have time to go shopping, so Ben was describing our needs (and my measurements, which James had given him; I had a red-hot flash in my spine, thinking of what it had taken to get them) to a personal shopper he knew. The list of clothing requirements was rather more extensive than I would have suggested, or even preferred, but at this point it was clear that I was now little more than the ball in a Rube Goldberg machine, bouncing from apartment to hair salon to personal shopper to office in attempt to get me ready as quickly and efficiently as possible.

Whatever; I could yell at people later when we were in less of a rush, and at least I didn’t have to be actively involved in this part. And I had to admit, having both hairdressers working over my hair was relaxing. I’d been alarmed when Selina told me the extensions were ‘heat-bonded’, but I hadn’t been burned yet; they were clearly as skilled in their own field as Ben and James were in the field of making my simple life incredibly complicated and embarrassing.

I took the opportunity to catch up on some sleep.

  


  


I didn’t dream this time, thank God. I was woken up by Selina lecturing Ben on how to style keratin extensions. I realised she was talking about me at the exact moment I remembered why I was here, and had one of the unpleasant rapid bootups that had become a feature of my life lately.

The hairdressers did amazing work. My hair, which before had tickled the middle of my ear at its longest point, now hung down almost to my nipples, and the highlights, which started in earnest somewhere around my cheeks, were a nice touch. It wasn’t styled, particularly, but I assumed they didn’t have the time, or that there was a waiting period before you could play with the new hair too much.

“Ah, she’s awake!” Warren said.

That pronoun again. It was weird that I was getting used to it. It was weirder still that I had no idea if the salon staff knew who I was — I’d come in with my usual hair, of course, but wearing a full face of makeup and the maxi dress that Ben had taken an instant visceral dislike to — but I’d decided before I fell asleep that it probably didn’t matter, because these people in particular were unlikely to care, one way or another. It was that sort of salon in that sort of neighbourhood; I was likely not even the most unusual person they’d see today. The thought was comforting: it was nice to feel both relatively ordinary and relatively unterrified.

The dress was less comforting. I looked down at it, remembering how hard it had been to put it on again, after the dream.

“What do you think?” Warren asked.

I smiled at him. “It looks fantastic,” I said, because it did. I was ambivalent about it all being on top of _my_ head, sure, but it was undeniably good-looking work. “How do I remove them, when I’m I’m done with them?”

He looked disappointed. “You want to get rid of them already?”

“They’re only for the weekend,” I said. “A modelling job.”

“Just massage the keratin bonds with olive oil,” Selina said, “and wait twenty minutes. You should be able to just pull them out.”

“Seems like a waste,” Warren said.

“Yes, yes, it’s a tragedy,” Ben said, breaking up our little gathering. “Alex, we have to go!”

I stood up, remembering to pick up the horrible little handbag. “Thank you so much, both of you,” I said. “Ben, did we pay already?”

“Yes, we’ve done terrible violence to the company credit card, _let’s go!_ ”

I let Ben bustle me out of the salon. When we got out onto the street the wind picked up my hair and blew it out around my head like I was in a shampoo commercial. I watched it for a moment in the salon window, fascinated. Perhaps it _would_ be waste to get rid of it straight after the expo; they’d gone to such lengths.

  


  


In the Uber back to James’ I noticed that some sneaky bastard had put acrylic nails on me while I napped in the salon (I had a vague memory of briefly waking up to someone buffing at my fingers, but had dismissed it as a hairdressing-induced fever dream). They weren’t huge talons or anything, just rounded little things perhaps a quarter-centimetre longer than my real nails and painted a colour that looked translucent but wasn’t, and I suppose they did cover up my slightly ragged real ones — the perils of a nervous biting habit. The driver told me I looked nice, though, and she was so friendly that I almost forgot about the nails while we chatted. I gave her a five-star review, which was tricky because I had to use my phone screen with the flat of my finger instead of the tip.

  


  


Ben tried to hide the logo on the carrier bags that had been left in the hall outside James’ apartment door, but he wasn’t a particularly wide person and I have the advanced pattern-recognition skills of the professional coder and problem solver: it wasn’t hard to infer the missing letters between HAR and OLS.

“Your personal shopper friend works at _Harvey Nichols?_ ” I yelled, doing that high-pitched screech again. I’d be attracting dogs soon; I decided to set them on Ben if and when they arrived. “Do you _know_ how expensive they are?”

“Of course I know,” he said, dropping the carrier bags by the sofa and starting to extract clothes from them. There were more than I expected. “I’m surprised _you_ know.”

I didn’t know, personally, not precisely, but Harvey Nicks was up there with Harrod’s in the don’t-even-think-about-it category for me, a Primark guy who stepped up as far as Next if I needed to get really posh. Money aside, I’d never particularly seen the point of buying nice clothes, anyway.

“Look,” Ben continued, turning to glare at me with his hands on his hips, “we _really_ don’t have much time, so if you’re going to freak out, can you please do so while doing something useful?”

“Define useful,” I said, feeling stubborn.

Ben reached into one of his cases and pulled out a small plastic bottle with a pump attached and threw it at me; it turned out to be adhesive. “Heads up!” he said, and I looked up to find another bottle flying toward me at head height. I caught it awkwardly: it was isopropyl alcohol. I shrugged at him, glue in one hand, alcohol in the other, and he sighed at me.

“Take your tits out,” he said, belabouring every word, like he was talking a child through their fiftieth failed attempt at tying their shoelaces, “clean your chest and the back of the tits with the alcohol, then spray glue on the tits and reattach them when the glue is dry.”

“This is tit glue,” I said, keeping my voice neutral. Of course it was. “Is it permanent?”

“What?” he said as he returned to sorting through the clothes. “You think I carry industrial-strength superglue in my drag kit? I just thought it would be nice if, say, you had to bend down to pick something up and one of your tits didn’t fall out of your bra.”

I had visions of chasing an errant breast out of the apartment like it was a cat who’d stolen my dinner, and laughed. Some of the tension left the room, and I took off my dress and bra and set to work following his instructions.

“Just reassure me I’m not a perv for doing this,” I said a short while later, holding a tit to my chest and waiting for the glue to set.

He pointed at his own chest. “ _I’ve_ done it,” he said, pretending to be offended. “Am I a perv?” At least, I think he was pretending.

“No, not at all,” I said hurriedly, waving the hand that didn’t have a tit in it. “But you’re, you know gay.”

“And you’re n—” he started, but interrupted himself and changed tack. “Drag queens do this, trans women who haven’t got their pills yet do this, B-list Hollywood stars making a play for Best Supporting Actor do this; even cis women sometimes do this if they’ve had a mastectomy.”

I frowned, and switched tit, since the first one seemed like it was pretty firmly attached. “What’s a ‘cis’ woman?”

Ben looked up at the ceiling. “And to think I’m not legally allowed to murder her,” he muttered. I deliberated over which part of the sentiment to be more offended by. “A cis woman is a woman who isn’t trans; a trans woman is a woman who isn’t cis,” he said. My face was clearly doing that stupid thing again, because he continued, “Okay, a cis person is someone who has no desire or need to switch away from their gender assigned at birth.” I opened my mouth to ask a question about that last part; he pre-empted me. “Jesus Christ. Let me make it really simple: if you are a boy—” he was using that child-lecturing tone again, “—and you are happy being a boy, or at least not miserable enough to _do_ anything about it, you are cis. If you are a boy but inside you’re _actually_ a girl, then you’re trans.”

I’d like to say that realisation dawned, but honestly I think I’m just an idiot. I nodded anyway and said, “Okay. I get it.”

“Thank all the heavens. Just remember: I gave you the _extremely_ simplified version; don’t try and explain it to anyone else until you’ve had a chance to do the background reading.” He smiled at me momentarily, and then looked me up and down. “ _Are you not moisturising your legs?_ ” he exclaimed, borrowing my dog-attracting screech.

“What?” I said, looking down at them, as if that would help. “Am I supposed to?”

“Oh my _God,_ ” he said. “You’re a world-class idiot. Do you _want_ to get a rash?”

“Hey,” I protested, affronted, “I’ve only been doing this for a day. Just let me have that one.”

“Fix it,” he ordered. “ _No._ Not with anything you find in his bedroom; it won’t smell right. There’s some in the smaller case.”

I disappeared into the bathroom, correct-smelling moisturiser in one hand, phone in the other, thinking hard. The price tag on this whole escapade kept shooting up. Paying for two decently-expensive hairdressers to put decently-expensive extensions in had been one thing, but Harvey Nichols? I nipped to the Harvey Nicks website on my phone and scrolled through some of their stuff; unless Ben’s personal shopper worked in some unadvertised bargain basement department, Ben was probably laying considerably more than a thousand pounds-worth of clothes out on the sofa out there. I scrolled some more and saw a skirt — a simple loop of black fabric — that cost over four hundred quid, and tripled my estimate of how much the clothes in those carrier bags were worth. I locked my phone in disgust. With that kind of cash to throw around, I probably could have found _some_ agency who could sort us out with a couple of models. Why was James throwing company money around _now_ , at _me_ , and not before, when it came to assigning the modelling budget I had access to for the trade show?

I had too many questions for him. The moisturiser felt nice on my legs, though.

  


  


Personally, I’d wanted to wear the reassuringly calf-length blue skirt that Ben had arranged as part of an outfit with a sort of shimmery top that looked loose and billowy; I was fed up with wearing form-fitting clothes. Ben, obviously, disagreed.

“That’s casualwear,” he said patiently, but absurdly; casualwear was jeans and a sweatshirt, not anything that still required me to wax my legs. There actually was a pair of jeans in the mix, draped over the chair on the other side of the living room, but Ben had his hand on my back and was guiding me towards the clothes he’d laid out on the sofa.

I was surprised at how relaxed I was, being essentially naked around Ben. It helped that I knew he wasn’t interested in me, but it was the case that I’d never been comfortable naked around anyone before. I’d always carried with me a quiet sense of shame about my scrawny little body; even at home alone I didn’t ever sleep in the nude, and didn’t generally look at myself in the mirror after showering until I had a robe on. Perhaps it was because, as Girl Alex, it was like I was playing a character; it wasn’t really _me_ who was standing around in her underwear.

Ben had switched out the bum pads for a new contraption that was more like a micro-miniskirt in flesh tone. My flesh tone, anyway; it was several shades too light for either James or Ben. He promised me it’d give me the same measurements as the old pads — or close enough, anyway — while being more comfortable and essentially invisible under all but the tightest of dresses. The flat front would even give the stretchy knickers a hand when it came to hiding my junk, and I wouldn’t need to take it off to use the loo, just sort of lift it up my body. A definite upgrade. I almost hugged him until he pointed out I’d need to take the nasty old bum pads with me anyway, in case I wanted to wear trousers, and my charitable feelings mostly disappeared.

He’d made me wash off my makeup and had then hunted across my face for stray facial hairs we’d missed with yesterday’s goop-and-shave session. He’d plucked at me for a few minutes — first at my jaw and then around my eyebrows — and then slathered me in moisturiser and dragged me back into the living room, to the array of incredibly expensive clothes that awaited me.

He kept up the pressure on my back, steering me away from all the clothes that looked relatively bearable. “You’re _not_ wearing casualwear to the office!”

“I _feel_ casual,” I protested.

“You’ll feel anything _but_ casual when you get there and find James alone with Emily-the-model,” Ben said, and I twitched a little.

“I told you,” I insisted, because he was still apparently imagining sordid things, “I stayed the night but we weren’t _together_. He can be alone with Emily if he wants.” I dismissed the tight feeling in the back of my throat.

“I’m sure. All the same, how _will_ you feel if you’re slobbing around and she’s looking like a million dollars?”

“I’ll feel very comfortable,” I said. So convincing!

“Be quiet and put that on,” he said. I obliged, feeling contrite.

 _That_ turned out to be a black skirt with gold horizontal bands and a black top with an asymmetrical neckline. I liked that the top covered my arms all the way to the wrists; I didn’t like that the skirt covered only half my thighs. I had to admit they fit well, though; Ben’s posh personal shopper knew what they were doing. He directed me to a pair of black ankle boots with a two-ish-inch heel that fit better and more snugly than any shoes I’d ever owned, and while I was admiring how comfortable they were, Ben turfed all my stuff out of my handbag and into a much smaller and less battered one.

“Now, sit,” he said, pointing at one of the kitchen stools. I did so and he turned on a lamp on the kitchen table. He must have brought it with him because I didn’t remember it from last night. The damn thing shone right in my face, but before I could complain he apologised and taped a bit of greaseproof paper over the front. It softened the light, so that it was no less bright but more diffuse, and it wasn’t blinding me any more. “Your hair will do, so there’s just makeup to go,” he said, and opened his kit. “I’m going to do you up in gold, around the eyes. It’ll go with the skirt and make your eyes look bluer. Is… that okay?”

Wow. Asking for consent! What a novelty. I nodded.

“Good. It’s only a shame we didn’t have time to pierce your ears.”

“You are _not_ piercing my ears,” I said firmly. There were some lines I wasn’t ready to cross. Increasingly few, apparently, but still.

“I’m not piercing your ears,” he promised. “Imagine if they got infected in that dirty conference hall!” He shuddered.

I relaxed. It turned out we had a limit, after all. When all this was over with, the extensions could be taken out, the clothes could be sold or donated, and the bum pads and tucking underwear could be loaded into a trebuchet and launched into the sea. We weren’t piercing my ears.

I closed my eyes and let Ben paint me.

  


  


We rode to the office in a taxi together. An honest-to-God taxi! The last time I rode in a taxi had been when I was twelve and my parents were getting divorced. Real taxis have kind of had bad associations for me since then, which I tried to put out of my mind so I could concentrate on all the other awful things going on.

In the back seat, knees both together (short skirt) and strangely elevated (higher heels than I was used to), I focused on controlling my breathing, thinking through how I would approach Emily Swan, preparing for my biggest challenge yet. Ben held my hand when he realised I was shaking. It was sweet. It was a shame he wasn’t going to be available for me to lean on or hide behind this afternoon; there were a few more things he needed to round up for tomorrow, he’d said. I shuddered when I imagined what terrible equipment he could acquire with a few hours at his disposal.

When I got out, I think he noticed I was just standing on the pavement, fiddling with the strap of my new handbag, pointedly not going into the building. He must have asked the taxi driver to wait, because he startled me out of my dithering with a firm hand on each of my shoulders, and looked me square in the eye.

“You can do this,” he said.

I looked back at him, unsure. “You really think? I’m—”

“Alex,” he interrupted, wielding my name, which was unusual for him, “you _can_ do this. Remember: you’re capable, you’re beautiful, you’re charming…”

“I am?”

“Yes, yes and yes. You helped design the software you’re showing off tomorrow, you have _killer_ legs and — I promise you — when you and James are in the room together he _only_ has eyes for you.”

My heart twitched. I wanted to protest, to tell Ben that I didn’t care about that, that I wasn’t interested in James that way! But I had a feeling he would continue to not believe me on that front, and anyway, all dressed up as Girl Alex, it was hard to deny that she, at least, was… paying attention to him. Still, the idea that James was interested in me was a non-starter; he knew me, had done for years, and I knew him, and in all the time I’d known him he’d never shown any interest in guys. He was able to be around me, dressed like this, without freaking out, because he was more comfortable around drag queens and crossdressers and the like than the average straight guy, having roomed with a drag queen at uni, and that’s all it was. Ben was misreading a lack of discomfort for interest.

On James’ part, anyway. _My_ feelings on the matter, it was finally becoming clear to me, were complex.

I closed my eyes and nodded, trying to focus solely on being Alex Brewer, knowledgeable coder, good organiser, and McCain Applied Computing employee of the month fourteen months running; but, like, the girl version.

I opened my eyes again and smiled at Ben. “Thanks,” I said.

“Just remember: stay in character!” he said, grinning back at me.

Before he could get back in the taxi I stepped forward and hugged him, being careful not to crumple the new clothes or smudge my makeup. “Thank you, really,” I said. “I’m sorry if sometimes I’ve been kind of a…”

“Bitch?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re welcome. Now go be amazing!” He pushed against me, trying to disengage from the hug, but he wasn’t exactly James and I wasn’t overpowered so easily. Before I let him go I nipped in and kissed him on the cheek.

It felt like something Girl Alex would do.

  


  


I ran into James in the lobby, fighting with the coffee vending machine. He was obviously trying to play the good host for Emily Swan — I gave my inner Girl Alex a warning look for the way she sulked about that — and he’d obviously run out of those stupid little pods for the office Tassimo. I had another hit of mild vertigo as I realised it had been less than four hours since I’d seen him at the office this morning. Time was running fast and yet treacle-slow at the same time, and I couldn’t get used to it; in some ways it was more jarring than the dresses.

He had his phone out and it looked like it was open on Twitter. Probably he was Tweeting something like, I can’t even make coffee without Alex to do it for me, I’m so terrible at life.

I’d forgotten that James, the bastard, was dressed so casually today. He was wearing dark, nondescript jeans and a grey t-shirt that I knew for a fact cost £6 because I’d been in the office when he’d come back from lunch clutching two three-packs of t-shirts from Marks and Spencer. I’d made fun of him for shopping at the supermarket for aspirational grannies. Still, he looked comfortable; I, meanwhile, was wearing a grand’s-worth of Harvey Nicks swag and had to remember to keep my knees together when I sat down.

Maybe being irritated with him was the way to deal with Girl Alex’s incipient crush? Perfect. All he had to do was keeping being fucking annoying and, lucky me, if James hadn’t been been able to make it in business he could have been an obliviously aggravating bastard on an internationally competitive level. I bet there were grants for it, and I bet you got them almost by accident, by being in the right place at the right time, just to make the whole exercise even more annoying for everyone around you.

He kicked the vending machine, and I decided to intervene before he hurt himself.

“You forgot to select cup size again, didn’t you?” I said.

James turned around, took one look at me and dropped his phone. I was grateful the lobby was carpeted around the vending machines, or I’m sure he would have guilted me about his smashed phone screen for the difficult couple of hours he’d have to put up with it for before a new one arrived from wherever rich people just effortlessly get stuff from.

He opened his mouth to say something, but seemed briefly to forget how to speak. He looked me up and down, a muscle in his jaw tensing as he did so.

“What?” I said. I didn’t _think_ I looked weird, but I gave myself a quick once-over just to be certain: I hadn’t broken my ankle in the boots, my skirt hadn’t ridden up, my bag wasn’t spilling its contents onto the floor and neither of my tits had made a break for the horizon. I didn’t know what had him so rattled, so I decided to tease him. “Never seen a pretty woman before?”

“Al— Alex?” he said eventually.

“Yep, and still so good they named me twice,” I replied, grinning. I stepped forward, retrieved his phone and placed it in his limp hand. I actually had to close his fingers around it so it didn’t fall right back out. “I thought you said you could cope without me,” I added, “but here you are, defeated by the vending machine. Again.”

“Oh,” he said. “Um, yeah.”

Rolling my eyes, I nudged him aside with my hip and cleared the half-finished order off the vending machine. “How does she take her coffee?” I asked. I had no idea where all my sudden confidence was coming from, and why it had replaced the nerves I’d been so consumed with in the taxi, but I wanted to bottle it so I could have some whenever I liked.

“Uh,” he remarked, and then finally seemed to get himself together. “Black, no sugar.”

Same as me. I dialled up a black, no sugar, and handed him the paper cup when it was done. He took it, but continued to stare at me.

Clearly, he still wasn’t as comfortable around crossdressing as he thought he was. He was acting something like he had last night in the restaurant — it’s possible he would need a good run-up like this _every_ time I put on a skirt, which suggested he’d be spending every morning at the expo walking into pillars and looking confused — but for some reason I was finding it funny now.

I poked him, and pointed to the compartment which had just popped open on the other side of the machine. “Lid?” I prompted.

In a daze, he retrieved and applied the plastic lid for Emily’s coffee as I sorted out a cup for me (also black, no sugar) and a cup for James (full cream, two sugars, and a sprinkle of chocolate flakes, because James is a giant baby). I made him carry both his and Emily’s, and redirected him from the stairs he automatically headed for, steering him towards the elevator in the corner.

“It’s only a couple of flights,” he complained. He was the kind of well-off fitness dork who had a gym membership, a private pool membership, and never took the elevator as a point of pride; I was the kind of skint loser whose only exercise was walking to work and back, who stayed thin largely because of forgetting to eat some days; I sort of lose track of stuff if I don’t set reminders. I think I’m so good at organising other people because first I had to learn to organise myself.

I nudged him with my boot, and laughed when he jumped a little.

“These things are at least a two-inch heel,” I said, “and in case you forgot, I’m new at heels. You want me to fall and break my neck?”

“Definitely not.”

“So, what’s she like?” I asked as we waited for the elevator.

“Who?”

“Emily Swan? The model we hired? I assume she’s up there.”

“Oh yeah,” he said, and cleared his throat a little. “She’s pretty smart, actually. I think you’ll like her.”

“Good,” I said. The elevator opened to admit us and I stepped in carefully, extremely aware that I had heels on and very much not wanting to get one stuck in the gap under the elevator doors.

“No, I mean I think you’ll _like_ her,” James said, sounding more like his old self. Damn; he was getting his equilibrium back. “She’s your type.” He nudged me with an elbow.

“You mean, someone who’ll break up with me after three weeks for reasons she can’t explain?” I was getting irritated with him again. “Or someone who’ll cheat on me with some guy she met at a club? Or someone who’ll flirt with _you_ in front of me and treat me like I’m not even there?” My history with women was pretty terrible. Fuck James for reminding me. And fuck James for rattling me like this. I closed my eyes, tried to think myself back into the mindset I’d had a few minutes earlier.

“Sorry,” he said. He didn’t sound sorry. “I just thought you’d like her. You know, she’s smart, pretty, down to earth… You should ask her out. You’ve got to meet someone who won’t dump you sooner or later.”

I opened my eyes to glare at him. “You think I can afford to ask a girl out when I’m like _this?_ ” I said. His face fell, like I’d caught him out, but he wouldn’t look at me. “Look at me!”

“What?” he snapped, but he looked at me anyway. His pupils dilated. I think he’d forgotten how I was dressed. I don’t know why; my voice should have been reminder enough, but as soon as we stepped into the elevator he’d snapped back into his old jerkish self, the way he usually acted when we were alone, before I started wearing dresses.

I grabbed his face with my free hand, making sure he didn’t look away. I wasn’t normally so physical, but I was _so_ angry with him. The elevator doors opened again, and I took a sideways step, interposing my leg between the doors so the sensor wouldn’t let them close. I didn’t let go of his face. Fortunately, the office had its own front door around the corner from the elevator, so unless Emily Swan was hanging out in the corridor she wouldn’t see any of this.

“If you’re going to make fun of me, _James,_ ” I hissed, “then you’re going to get out of this elevator alone and I’m going to go home, burn all these _stupid_ clothes, and you can wear a dress to the expo yourself!”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I didn’t mean anything. I promise.”

I let his face go. “Remember how freaked out I was this morning?” He nodded. “None of that has magically gone away. I’m staying on top of it but it’s really, _really_ hard, so the least. You. Could. Do. Is. Help.”

“God, I will, yes,” he said, flustered, looking away.

“Right,” I said, stepping out of the elevator and walking towards the office door.

Behind me, I heard James mutter, “When did you become such a bitch?” The word felt very different in his mouth, in this context, than it had from Ben, and I wanted to turn around and kick him.

I took a deep breath instead, opened the office door, and prepared to meet Emily Swan.


	5. Chapter 5

Emily Swan was beautiful. I’d known that already, having seen her headshot in the packet from her agency, along with pictures of the other two models who were now off sick (and thus presumably getting a lot of sleep and watching a lot of Netflix in pyjamas; God, I was jealous). What I hadn’t been prepared for was that she was _tall._ She had a good two inches on me, even with me in heels and her in trainers.

Oh yeah, that’s the other thing she was: wearing casual clothing. Jeans and a tank top. Here I was in a skirt I couldn’t get to reach my knees even if I tugged on it, in a whole outfit that probably cost more than a month’s rent, and the professional model in front of me looked like she was about to interrupt a Game of Thrones marathon for a quick trip to the corner shop for tea bags. My plans to murder Ben, which I’d put on hold in the taxi over after he was so kind, started ticking over again.

She was standing by my desk, leafing through some of our technical documents, and looked up when I marched in. She smiled at me, and raised her eyebrows a little; I wondered what kind of impression I made. Assuming James hadn’t gone out and bought an Armani suit while I was away, I was the most overdressed person in the office by a factor of twenty. And definitely the one with the least comfortable feet.

“Miss Swan,” I said warmly, walking over to meet her. “I’m Alex Brewer.”

“Miss Brewer, hi,” she said, holding out a hand. I shook it and then perched on the back of the next desk over, taking some of the weight off my feet without having to actually sit down and thus feel even shorter compared to her. I deposited my coffee cup on the desk next to me.

“Alex, please,” I said. The phrase ‘ _Miss_ Brewer was my father,’ jumped into my head before I could stop it, and I tried to turn the grin into a welcoming smile.

“Call me Emily,” she responded in kind. “Mr McCain was talking me through some of your other projects.” So it was ‘Mr McCain’ was it? I cursed my traitorous brain for picking up on that and making favourable deductions about the level of intimacy they’d reached. “He said you would be best placed to go over the software we’ll be presenting on the show floor tomorrow.”

I nodded. On cue, Mr McCain entered the office, coffees in hand. Emily looked over at him and I took the opportunity to fix him with one of my nastier glares. I didn’t know why he had taken so long to get from the elevator to the door, but I hoped it was because he was kicking himself for being a jerk. For what it was worth, I thought his eyes looked apologetic, but it wasn’t worth much.

“Miss Brewer,” James said to me as he passed Emily her coffee, “Miss Swan and I were just going over the in-development stuff. Most of it you’ve worked on, I know, but I saved one for last because I don’t believe you’re familiar with it. Would you join us?”

I rolled my eyes at being ‘Miss Brewer’ed again, but nodded. He wasn’t usually a super-formal guy so I didn’t know what he was trying to do, throwing all these honorifics around. Possibly he was trying to sound like a proper adult and not a twenty-three year-old running a tech startup with daddy’s money. Hey, if he was going to call me a bitch, I was going to be one. At least in the safety of my own head. “Sure,” I said.

We arranged ourselves around the spare desk they’d been using before I got there. James sat next to me, opposite from Emily, which I thought was a bit unfair on her, like we were ganging up on her or something. He seemed as if he was vibrating with nervous energy, like he was finding the stress of not actively being a jerk hard to handle. I wanted to put a hand out to calm him down but, for a number of reasons, decided against it. With luck Emily, who didn’t know him, wouldn’t notice anything out of the ordinary.

He talked us both through the project. It was pretty interesting, I had to admit, although early enough in development that I didn’t see how it could be ready even for next year’s round of trade shows unless we literally doubled our engineer count.

Emily Swan was impressive, though. I could tell she knew her stuff from the questions she was asking, and I wondered why she was on the agency modelling circuit with a brain like hers. On the other hand, what did I know? Maybe modelling was way more fun than coding? I shifted in my uncomfortable underwear and kind of doubted that wearing ridiculous clothing in front of hundreds of people for three days straight could be all _that_ fun, even for someone who _didn’t_ have a nasty pinching sensation in the end of her dick when she sat in a certain way.

“And with that,” James finished, “I’ll leave you in the capable hands of Miss Brewer.”

He’d been smarming at me for the last five minutes so I kicked him, under the desk. The boots I was wearing were pretty heavy; I hoped it left a bruise.

“Thanks so much, Mr McCain,” Emily said.

I gave him a tight smile as he left, watching him carefully to check for a limp (nope; damn), but I didn’t let out the breath I’d been holding until his office door was good and closed. I felt my shoulders droop as all the air rushed out of me.

“Is everything okay between the two of you?” Emily asked.

I tried not to groan. I realised I should probably have been trying to be more subtle. It wasn’t especially professional to loudly signal to virtual strangers that I was fighting with my boss. “Everything’s fine,” I said, sounding rather too venomous for that to be believable. “He’s just an arsehole, that’s all.”

I glared at the desk for a few seconds before I noticed Emily hadn’t replied yet. I looked up; she seemed like she was trying to decide whether to ask something, and I replayed what I’d said in my mind. Yeah, especially with the tone of voice I’d used, it sort of sounded like I was implying he was abusive or sexually inappropriate. You idiot, I told myself, for the thirtieth or fortieth time in the last twenty-four hours.

“Is he, uh…?” Emily said, before I could head her off.

“No,” I said, and struggled for a moment as I tried out various ways to phrase what I was trying to say. “He’s not _that_ kind of arsehole. Not the, ah, inappropriate kind. It’s just…” I trailed off, took a breath, and reconsidered my approach. “We’ve known each other a long time, since before he started this company, and he knows how to get under my skin. Which he was kind of doing in the elevator on our way up here. And I’m pretty sure he was being so incredibly formal either as an apology or as a way of needling me further, and the infuriating thing about him is that I can’t work out which he intended.” I sighed. “Or possibly he was just trying to look professional, which would be out of character. He’s not normally like that. He’s always just called me ‘Alex’; I’ve never been ‘Miss Brewer’ before today.” Oh, so accurate. “But yeah, it’s honestly nothing you need to worry about; it’s old friend stuff, not anything worse than that.”

“Got it,” Emily said. “Thanks.”

I wondered if I’d said too much, or said it the wrong way. I felt like Ben had dressed me up as some kind of corporate ice queen — and I suspected the first impression I’d made hadn’t been far off, striding in with my coffee, wearing expensive clothes and a pissed-off look — but that persona really didn’t come naturally to me, so if I was going to babble, best to babble early so as to set appropriate expectations. I wasn’t an ice queen; I was a nervy but friendly idiot. _With great legs,_ my inner Ben added.

“You know what it’s like,” I said, feeling very tired all of a sudden, “when you’ve known someone forever…”

Emily’s eyebrows quirked. “Have you and he…?”

“Have we…? Oh!” It was like someone had dumped a bucket of ice in my bra. “No, definitely not. Never ever. Not in a million years.” I winced; this was getting into doth-protest-too-much territory. “I’m, um, not into guys,” I attempted as a clarification.

She laughed. “Does _he_ know that?”

I frowned. “Yeah, he _definitely_ knows that.”

Another laugh. “Poor guy,” she said, and leaned forward, continuing in a conspiratorial whisper, “I think he’s got it bad for you.”

The ice cubes in my bra spread to the rest of my body. “I really don’t think so,” I said quickly. “We don’t have that kind of relationship.”

“Ah,” Emily said. “Sorry if I crossed a line, there.”

“No, you’re fine,” I said. “He’s just been very trying, lately. And since it’s usually just us here, he’s hard to escape. He’s sort of exhausting.” I was about to change the subject to the software materials we still had to cover, and then I remembered there was one field in particular in which Emily Swan could be extremely helpful to me. “Actually, before we get into it—” I indicated at the materials pack, “—I have some questions for you. About trade show modelling.”

“Oh?” she looked surprised.

“We couldn’t actually book any other models to back you up,” I said, and saw her expression change in response so I continued quickly, “and your boss was very clear that you must not be required to work solo, so I was… volunteered. That’s at least part of why I’m annoyed with him.” I nodded towards James’ office door.

“Ohhhh,” she said, understanding dawning.

“I’m annoyed at myself, as well,” I admitted. “I gave in way too easily.”

“Well, he _is_ your boss,” Emily said.

“I think it’s more like I can’t say no to him when he looks like a kicked puppy,” I said, smiling. “But now I very suddenly have to be a model, on extremely short notice, and I’ve never done anything like it before. And James wanted for me to, I don’t know, get used to being all dressy, so before I know it I’m in nice clothes and getting my hair done and I’m being covered in makeup when the most I’ve ever worn before is a bit of lipstick.” This was true: at school I was in an otherwise all-girl group of friends in drama class, and they’d thought it would be brilliant if I played Juliet in our end-of-year production, opposite my friend Beth as Romeo. Like I said, kernel of truth, etc. Keeping my stories straight would be easier if the only _actual_ lie I was telling was about my gender, and my rusty acting talents would be less stretched if I played the plain-Jane-out-of-her-element rather than the effortless superfemme. “The guy who did my makeup had to spend five minutes lecturing me on not touching my face! I’ve been binge-watching YouTube tutorials by people who seem to own six million infinitesimally-different makeup brushes. I’m not used to all this—” I indicated my entire body with a wave of a hand, “—which is part of why I wish James would lay off.”

Emily looked thoughtful. “Maybe he’s just not used to seeing you like this, like a ‘real’ woman, and that’s why he’s being weird.” She finger-quoted on ‘real’, so I didn’t feel like I had to stand up for unreal women everywhere. “Even though he knows you’re… unavailable.”

I felt like being nasty about him. “I think it’s because he’s had a longer dry patch than usual, with us being so busy, and now all of a sudden he can see my legs. It’s got his small brain all confused.”

She laughed.

“So, like I said,” I continued, “trade show modelling: I’ve never done it before, and I really don’t know what to expect.”

Emily put a hand on mine. “You poor thing,” she said.

“I take it that means it’s not a laugh a minute?”

“I mean, it can be fun, kind of, sometimes. But it’s not exactly what I would have picked as a career.”

“How did you get into it?” I asked.

She shrugged. “I got my degree in computer engineering, decided against post-grad, and then failed to get an actual job in engineering. I figured I’d do this while I waited for an opportunity to turn up.”

I couldn’t possibly have missed the question she was asking with her eyes.

“If this weekend goes well for the company,” I said slowly, thinking through what I was going to say as I said it, “then I suspect James will be looking for at least one new engineer. If you can get me some sample code and it looks good, then I can pitch you to him. For a try-out.”

“Really?” she said.

“I mean, he’ll owe me one, after this weekend.” I snorted. “He’ll owe me one _thousand_.” And I liked Emily; she was nice, and if she was as capable as she appeared she’d be a lifesaver. It’d be nice to have a woman around the office, anyway.

We settled in to our information exchange. About a half-hour in I yelled for James to get us cups of tea; gratifyingly, and to poorly-suppressed giggles from Emily and me, he did.

  


  


After Emily had gone home for the evening — she’d be meeting us at the hotel we’d booked for the expo late next morning — I sat back in my chair, rested my feet on another chair, and massaged my temples. It had occurred to me, far too late to stop my unhelpful mouth, that I had practically offered Emily a job at the office, which would have been fine except by the time she turned up for the try-out I’d be looking radically different. I sat on it for a minute, but couldn’t come up with a solution that didn’t involve breaking my promise to her, which I wasn’t prepared to do, so I put it on the pile of problems to be solved after I survived the weekend.

I stretched, looked down at my legs, remembered what I was wearing, and realised I had another question to answer: what was I going to do about sleeping tonight? Everything had gone by in such a rush that I hadn’t thought to bring men’s clothes with me to work, and that meant either going home as Girl Alex, which would involve navigating my neighbourhood and block of flats without seeing anyone I knew (nope), staying at James’ again (definitely not; I needed some space away from him), or staying at a hotel. And while I knew I could probably, on current form, get James to pay for it, I kind of wanted the comforting, boring familiarity of my own apartment. I also didn’t want to be on the emotional hook for another outlandish expense from James while he was in pursuit of whatever the hell it was he was doing.

I stretched, stood up, and walked over to James’ office.

“Alex!” he said when I opened the door, but I silenced him with a raised finger.

“I’m going out for maybe half an hour,” I said, “but I’ll be back. _Don’t_ leave before then; we have to talk.”

And I turned and left without another word, catching a satisfying glimpse of his expression on the way out.

The office block we leased half a floor in was just down the road from a retail park, and it wasn’t long before I was headed back with a bagful of tracksuit bottoms, a t-shirt, a hoodie, a pair of trainers in size 8, and (crucially) a large woolly hat. I’d gone to the most upscale store in the park, and in deference to the way I was dressed I’d shopped in the women’s department, although the clothes I bought looked unisex enough to my eye. I cheekily paid with the company credit card, which I planned never to give back if I could avoid it. This didn’t count as a favour from James, though; being able to walk home without twisting my ankle in two-inch heels was definitely a work expense.

Back at the office, James was sat by my desk, with two glasses of what was undoubtedly alcohol in front of him. He smiled as I approached. I dumped the bag, sat opposite him, and deliberately pushed away the drink that was meant for me.

He didn’t say anything. Possibly he was getting smarter.

“James,” I started, trying to remain calm. I lost it instantly. “What the _fuck_ , James?”

“Alex—”

“You _know_ what I’m doing for you, and you tease me, you— you—” I had to clamp down on myself for a second because I could feel tears pricking at my eyes. I think perhaps the stress was getting to me a little.

“In the elevator?” he asked. I nodded. “I wasn’t teasing you. I just, I just forgot.” James’ voice was as calm as I wanted mine to be. Aspirational little prick.

“ _How could you forget?_ ” I managed to stop myself from summoning dogs, but it was an effort. “ _I_ can’t forget!”

“I just— I was tired, and I think my blood sugar was kind of low.” Like I said, James was a fitness nut, a.k.a. the only kind of non-diabetic person who talks about their blood sugar. “I wasn’t paying attention. It was too easy to slip into seeing you as, you know, just Alex, and not this other person I’m… I’m _making_ you become.” He looked guilty about turning me into his fun Barbie project. Good.

“I _am_ just Alex!” I insisted, as much to persuade the part of my brain that had other ideas as to persuade James.

“But you’re not,” he said. “It’s not the clothes — or it’s not _just_ the clothes. You’re different. More— more— I don’t know. More _something_. I can’t describe it.”

“You called me a bitch,” I said flatly.

If he’d looked contrite before, now he looked downright dejected. “I’m really sorry about that,” he said, not looking at me. “It’s just that you looked _so_ good in the lobby — you still do — and then I wasn’t looking at you in the elevator and it was like you were your old self, and then every time I turned round and saw you it was like stubbing my toe.” Just what a girl wants to hear, that seeing her is like injuring your foot. “I got kind of confused and defensive. I didn’t mean to upset you, but then you _were_ upset and I didn’t know why, and…” He looked up at me again. “I’m not that guy, you know? Not any more, not since I was a teenager. But I was. Before you knew me. I was a shit to girls. I was a bastard little kid and I got away with it all the time. It took me years to grow up. I _swear_ I’m not that guy any more. I hate myself for calling you… that. I don’t exactly know why I did, but I did, and it was inexcusable.”

I cooled off a little. I hated to let him off the hook, but it was hard to see him look so sad. I didn’t think he was trying to be manipulative, either: he wasn’t giving me puppy eyes; he just looked really fucking miserable.

“Okay,” I said. “I get it. But you know—” I took a deep breath, wondering if I was was about to go there with my friend; my boss, “—the way to not be ‘that guy’ is to _not be him_.” I tried to ignore the irony of me, looking like I currently did, saying that. “If you’re not that guy until a woman pisses you off — or someone who currently looks like a woman,” I added, sheepishly, belatedly, “then you pretty much still are that guy.”

He nodded, hanging his head. I didn’t want to push it any more; if he hadn’t got the message now, he never would. But I thought he had.

I gave him a minute to let it all sink in. His hand was on the desk between us, so I reached forward and took it in mine. He didn’t flinch like I expected. I squeezed it, mostly to reassure him that, while he _had_ fucked up, he hadn’t fucked up terminally. I wasn’t going to be one of those girls who left her handbag at his place and never came back for it. Well, not _yet_ , anyway.

A neuron fired, and I set a reminder in my head to email one of his old girlfriends and ask if she’d left him merely because they were incompatible and not because he’d lost his temper and hurt her. He’d met two of them through work, so they should still be in our directory; hopefully one of them would reply to me.

“Please just remember how hard this is for me,” I said, shaking my head to dismiss the thought for now. “I get that you didn’t mean to upset me, but I don’t always have the space in my brain to sort through charitable explanations every time it _seems_ like you’re being a jerk.”

“I’ll be more careful,” he said.

“Oh yeah,” I remembered, “and what was with calling me ‘Miss Brewer’ the whole time with Emily?”

“I thought it would help you stay in character,” he said ruefully. “I got a text from Ben that was like, ‘Help her,’ which really added to the guilt, because I’d just been a shit. It was all I could think of.”

“Okay,” I said, “but it was kind of weird. Call me Alex, please?”

I attempted a smile to reinforce the request, but for some reason it made him look away. I let his hand go, but didn’t move mine far from his.

“I will,” he said, and looked back at me. “Alex.” Then he blinked, like someone had just shone a 200-watt bulb in his face. “God, Alex, look at you! How are you _doing_ this?”

“You’re the one who put me up to it,” I said testily. Huh, ‘testily’; I wondered if the word had the same origin as the name for the things that were currently shoved up inside my body, feeling vaguely hot and uncomfortable. I tried not to laugh.

“I know, but I thought you’d just look, you know, good enough.”

“Thanks,” I said. The sarcasm seemed to wound him.

“I mean, good enough to pass, especially with Ben’s help, but, but, you’re _gorgeous!_ ” It seemed really important to him that I know this about myself.

“Thank you,” I said, sincerely this time. Whatever the motivation, and whatever the reason, it was a nice thing for him to say. “Look, about that,” I added, “I guess I don’t understand… _why_.”

“What do you mean?”

“I know why we need a second model for the trade show—” even in my head I didn’t use the term ‘booth babe’ any more, “—and even though it is _completely absurd,_ I know why we picked me, because your cousin Sophie would fucking murder you if you even suggested it, and none of the other women you know will talk to you ever again or you wouldn’t have a drawer of their stuff in your bedroom they’ve never asked to get back.” Unable quite to dispel the thought from earlier, I watched for a reaction from him as I said that; none was apparent. “So I was basically your only choice. Except,” I added, as a thought occurred, “I’m still not sure how you knew I’d turn out to be okay at this.”

He shrugged. “I’ve seen your mum’s Facebook page. You’re tagged in photos from some kind of school play.” I groaned. Of course: fucking Facebook. He continued, “You looked good, and in the other photos from back then you look basically like you do now, so… I was pretty sure it would work out.”

“Fine.” Not fine. “But still, me working the trade show is one thing. But the hair? The personal shopper from Harvey Nichols? You’re laying out a lot of money on this, and I don’t understand why you didn’t just allocate that money to modelling in the first place. I’m sure we could have got someone even at short notice if you’d _told_ me you were willing to spend.”

James looked pained. “I think I just got swept up in the panic of it all. Emily Swan called and we were suddenly out of time. Ben suggested hair extensions so you wouldn’t have to deal with a wig all weekend, which sounded like a good idea, so I okayed it. And _then_ he suggested the personal shopper to expedite things, and also to have someone in the loop who really understood women’s fashion, and _that_ sounded like a good idea, so I okayed it.” He sighed, and knocked back the rest of his drink. “It was very easy to agree to it all at the time, in the interest of getting you ready quickly, and making things as safe and comfortable as possible for you. Especially with the real hair instead of the wig. And I checked, you know,” he added, “yesterday afternoon in my apartment, while you were getting ready: even with that kind of money, even for _five times_ that money, there were no models available at that notice. I don’t know what magic you worked to get Hammond’s, but I couldn’t repeat it. Not even bidding over what the contracts were worth. We were just out of time. It was you, or no-one.” He looked away. “It was always you or no-one.”

I felt like I needed some support at that point, so I reached forward and retrieved the glass he’d poured for me. It warmed my throat as I sipped it.

We sat quietly for a moment. I wished I knew what he was thinking.

“About the money,” I said, “I seems a little… foolish. To spend that kind of cash, I mean. Especially now, with the company in such a make-or-break state. _Especially_ on someone who isn’t going to have a use for all this stuff inside a week.”

He finally looked at me again. “Alex, you’ve seen the numbers. You _know_ a thousand pounds here or there isn’t going to make a difference to this company. The stakes are so much higher than that; if we fail, it won’t be because the balance sheet has an expense on it that’s less than it costs to set up a desk and computer for a single employee.”

“I suppose,” I said. “It’s… this is all so _weird_.” I was saying that a lot, but it was true.

“I mean, yeah,” James said. “I didn’t expect— I didn’t think you’d go for it, to be honest.”

“We both know I’m an idiot,” I said. “But I mean…” I couldn’t bring myself to say, ‘I feel like your dress-up doll’. “I feel like you’re enjoying this a bit too much. Playing around with me, I mean.”

He grinned sheepishly. “I won’t pretend it hasn’t been fun,” he said. “And watching you come out of your shell has been—” he waved his empty glass in the air as he searched for the right word, “—motivational. You’ve always been so, so buttoned-up. Quiet. Kind of sad? Yesterday, at the restaurant and after, you were like a different person.”

“But I was terrified!”

“Until you weren’t,” he pointed out.

I wanted to tell him I’d been scared the whole time, but it wasn’t true. Yes, my anxiety spiked before I had to do anything I hadn’t done before but then, when I’d gotten over my initial fear of discovery, the fear had sort of evaporated. In the restaurant and today, with Emily. It had been oddly normal, both times, chatting, working; normal enough that I’d been able to relax and get on with it. And a string of other random people — mainly Uber drivers — who had also responded well to me had each added a tiny bit of reinforcement to my confidence. I wasn’t quite at the point where I could walk up to a stranger and know for sure how they would read me, but that level of certainty didn’t seem far off.

With the terror of being found out gone, the times I’d been most scared were when I was alone with James. Not because of him, but because of the way I was responding to him. The way I _kept_ responding to him. Like I was right now. With my anger boiled away, and with the warmth of alcohol settling on my stomach, something of what I’d felt last night was coming back to me. I hadn’t noticed, but I’d leaned forward in my chair — farther forward than I’d needed to just to fetch my drink — and James had leaned in, too. We were closer, sitting on opposite sides of the desk, than we had been in the restaurant, sitting across the table in the booth.

I realised with a shock that the whole time I’d been thinking, I’d been looking at his lips.

“I won’t keep pushing you to do all this if you’re not comfortable with it,” he said. “The hair and the clothes and everything. Like I said before, we can stop at any time.” He smiled. I drank it in. “I just wanted you to have some fun.”

My eyes left his face and tracked down his upper body. God, I _really_ wanted to have some fun. It was all I could do not to lean across the table. I could just reach out and—

God fucking dammit, Alex Brewer! Who the hell are you lately?

I pushed my chair away and stood up, shaking my head to try and clear it.

“I’m going to get changed and go home,” I said.

I think it must have looked to James like I was angry again, or maybe scared. I wasn’t; I was merely giving myself emotional whiplash. He stood up and took a step around the desk, at first looking like he was going to reach out to touch me, and then visibly deciding against it, stepping back again, dropping his hands to his side and carefully standing very neutrally. The expression on his face was difficult for me to read.

“I’m sorry,” he said again.

I wanted him to stop apologising, so before I thought about it too hard I walked up and hugged him. It took a moment for him to hug me back, but when he did the pressure of his arms around me was wonderful.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I’m managing. And you’re _going_ to help me, aren’t you?” I prompted, looking up at him. Even in two-inch heels I still had to look up at him; maddening.

He looked down. Our faces were so close that his breath made my lips tingle. “I promise,” he said, sounding hoarse. “Anything you need.”

He still looked kind of sad, so I kissed him on the cheek. It felt different than when I’d kissed Ben. I lingered for a second and then, quickly, cheeks red, eyes now firmly looking away, I escaped with my carrier bag to the bathroom to get changed for the walk home.

  


  


I texted James when I was safely out of the building and away from temptation. **I’m walking home. I’ll see you in the morning. Where are we meeting again?**

The reply came very quickly. **Ben will do you up at the office. I’ll drop off everything from my apartment and go on to pick up the stuff from the tailor, and meet you back there. I’ve got a car booked to take us to Birmingham. It’s a long walk home. Are you sure you don’t want to stay at mine tonight?**

I’d stripped off all traces of Girl Alex in the bathroom around the corner from our office, swapped skirt and boots for jogging trousers and trainers, and glared at myself in the mirror with my hoodie and woolly hat on, hair extensions hidden, makeup washed off, to try and fix in my mind the idea that she was gone for now, that it was just me. I felt somehow diminished. The vertigo had come back, and I’d had to sit on one of the toilets for a few minutes until I regained my composure.

Now that it was just me again, a proposal from James to stay the night at his place ought to have been significantly less enticing, and it was, kind of. But there was another part of me — the part that was tempted as hell and didn’t see anything wrong with that — that didn’t want James to see me like _this_. Not yet.

I worried that if he saw me like this, it would break the spell.

**It’s fine,** I texted. **I want to clear my head, get a bit of space. Sleep in a normal bed, not on your sofa or something.**

His next reply, his last for the night, took a long time to come. **Okay. Be safe. Call me if you need ANYTHING.**

I stared at my phone screen for quite a while.

I walked on. It was quite cold, but I liked it. I was still a little warm inside from the alcohol, and I needed a good buffeting from the wind to help me think clearly. I let it pass through me; I unzipped my hoodie and let it chill me to the bone. I’d be like those Scandinavian guys who go out naked in the snow and then leap into a hot bath, although in my case it’d be a shower with a towel around my head because Ben had told me not to wash my hair yet; there was special shampoo for extensions, and I didn’t have any.

I checked to see that there was no-one around, and temporarily switched back to my old voice, just to hear it. Except, just like this morning, it came out as a strangled adolescent warble. I shrugged; it was probably a good thing that it wasn’t so easy for me to switch my voice back. I’d have to practice talking normally again for a day or two when this was all over.

I made it back to my block without incident, nodded at rather than greeted the few people I saw hanging around, and locked my front door gratefully behind me. It’d only been a little more than a day since I’d last been home, but it felt like a lifetime.

My flat was essentially one room to live in and one room to wash in, with a cupboard and bookshelf in the small hall that connected the two. Before I forgot, I extracted the Harvey Nichols outfit from the carrier bags and hung it up in its component pieces in my wardrobe. I didn’t want to imagine how Ben would react to the discovery that I’d just slung it all in the corner in a plastic bag. I peeled the boobs off my chest and wiped them clean with the stuff from the unlabelled spray bottle Ben had put in my bag. I laid the handbag and underwear and boobs out on my table and tried not to look at it all.

The hot shower I’d been dreaming of was calling to me. I undressed and threw my jogging stuff on the bed, but left on the woolly hat, planning to wrap a towel round it so the extensions could have two layers of protection while I washed.

But I got caught in the bathroom mirror. It only showed me from my belly up, and I looked… strange. I shouldn’t have: it was the same old me with the same old scrawny body. I’d never particularly liked it when someone else saw me naked, but I was well used to my own reflection. It shouldn’t have rattled me like this.

I looked like someone had loaded me into Photoshop and fucked around with the proportions. Like I was a long-dead actor being revived with CG for a franchise movie. I was the same as always, just _wrong_. I couldn’t figure out what exactly it was about me that looked wrong, I just did.

_This isn’t me,_ said a voice in my head. _Why would you ever have thought it was me?_

Slowly, very, very slowly, I reached up and took off the hat, dropping it carelessly into the empty bath. My hair tumbled out from under it, resting against my shoulders. I finger-combed it a little, gently shaping it until it didn’t look quite so messy.

I still didn’t look right. It wasn’t the hair.

I hesitantly covered my flat chest with my forearm, and as soon as I did it was like my vision cleared. Like I was at the optician trying out lenses and they’d just switched to the right one.

Moving as if in a trance, I left the bathroom and walked over to my kitchen table, rummaged in the handbag until I found the lipstick Ben had stuffed in there, and returned to the mirror, making sure to hide my chest before I looked at myself. I swiped it over my lips, colouring them the just-deeper-than-natural colour Ben had picked out for me, and dropped the lipstick in the sink.

A minute or an hour later, I came back to myself. I met my gaze in the mirror, saw eyes wet and red, saw tear-tracks on my cheeks. I looked down and I was leaning on the sink with both arms, supporting my entire weight on it. Suddenly afraid I’d break the thing, I let go, and in my dizziness and my vertigo I fell backwards onto the bathroom floor.

This stuff was really messing with my head.

I relieved myself, washed my hands and face, brushed my teeth — all without looking in the mirror — and rushed out of the bathroom. I felt like all eyes were on me in my nakedness, even though I was completely alone, so I redressed myself in the tracksuit bottoms and t-shirt I’d bought earlier and dove into bed, pulling the covers over my head, the vision of my broken body burning into me.

In the dark, it was just me and her.

_What do I want?_ I asked myself, for the second time in as many days. It was simple: I wanted the trade show to be over and done with; I wanted everything to go back to normal; I wanted to never feel like that when I looked in the mirror ever again. And I wanted James.

I hugged myself, arms around my belly, waiting to be warm.

There was no denying now that I was attracted to him. Magnetically. In a way that was completely new, not just with James but with anyone. Last week, sharing the office, working together, talking, eating takeout, it had all been completely normal, but now just being near him electrically charged my body. I had to force myself to walk away from him, to not bury myself in his chest. I had a physical need for him that I’d never felt around anyone before.

And the only thing that had changed was the girl stuff.

I didn’t understand how that was possible. As much as I’d tried to think of Girl Alex as a separate personality, she was me, through and through, top to toe, just playing a role; pretending to lock her up in my head until I needed her was nothing more than trying to hide some of my wants and needs from myself, calling them illegitimate, invalid; fake. It didn’t matter that maybe some of those wants and needs were new to me. It didn’t change that they were _mine._ I had to face her, face myself, and ask honestly, what I was and what I wanted.

What I wanted was James. What I was, seemingly, was bisexual.

So _why now?_ Did the girl stuff just bring something out of me that had always been inside? Had I explained away my feelings for him as admiration, as gratitude? I was starting to wonder if I could trust my own memory.

I wrapped myself in my duvet, luxuriating in the stored body heat that was finally radiating back to me, dizzy with questions, and tried to imagine kissing James. I pictured him in his apartment, lounging on his couch, pictured myself walking over to him, taking him by the hand and kissing him. It was… empty. In my head, he was unresponsive, and I was barely there: a ghostly presence in my own mind.

I thought back to the times I’d been most attracted to him, most _aware_ of him, and suddenly there I was in the office, with him in his smart-casuals and me in the skirt, top and boots Ben had picked out for me. He was in his office and I was walking through the door. He smiled as he saw me, a warm, anticipatory smile that put warmth in my belly and lightning in my spine. We met. We embraced. I stood in front of him, elevated enough by my heels that I only had to stretch a little to reach him, and he had one arm around my shoulder while the other stroked my back. I met his eyes and his hand moved down, pushed against my bottom, gave me the boost I needed to reach him and kiss him. I felt his lips part, felt his tongue against mine. I could feel his body in every point of contact between us.

His hand gripped my bottom harder and he lifted me, turning me so he could place me on his desk, knocking documents and oddments aside so I could sit unimpeded. My hands free, I wriggled them under his t-shirt and raised it up over his chest, letting it linger around his neck so he couldn’t see me but I could see him. I kissed him through the fabric, giggling at his helplessness. He took over from me, pulling the t-shirt over his head and tossing it aside, and then doing the same with my top. We kissed again and I buried my fingers in his hair. He found the waistband of my skirt and slipped his hand under it as I clasped my fingers together behind his head. My legs parted to allow him closer, skirt riding up until it sat on my hips, and he pressed himself to me. I felt my breasts compress against his chest and, finally, we devoured each other.

Alone in my bed, eyes closed, heart racing, I reached down and let him touch me.


	6. Chapter 6

Nightmares tied my duvet almost in a knot overnight. I woke, clinging to my pillow, still half in dreams, chased through mistily-remembered classrooms and offices, shedding clothes as I ran but still moving too slowly, tearing my skin away in wet clumps trying to make myself lighter. I finally made it to my cold, dark apartment, shutting and locking the door against my invisible pursuer, collapsing into my bed, breathing hard, drenched with sweat, alone and awake.

My phone, blinking darkly at me from its charging cradle, informed me it was 3:51am.

The tracksuit bottoms and the t-shirt were plastered to my skin. I felt filthy.

  


  


I couldn’t bring myself to get changed before I walked to work.

  


  


I’d never arrived at the office before 6am before. Certainly we’d pulled overnighters pretty often, James and I, with two desks pulled together and a mountain of takeout between us, working on some project or other, huddled around a circle of light from our computer screens like campers around a bonfire. One time, he actually made s’mores with a lighter, to distract me from a particularly nasty bit of code that was making my brain hurt, and we tried feeding them to each other on our impromptu s’more skewers (pencils); it didn’t go well, and more marshmallow got on my face than went in my mouth, which James found terribly funny for some reason.

But when it came to ordinary work days I had firm(ish) boundaries that started at 8:30am and included something from Starbucks.

I unlocked the main door and stamped inside, hauling my ratty suitcase in after me. It was mostly empty, apart from yesterday’s outfit, the breasts and the underwear, the handbag, and some toiletries. The plan was for Ben to fill it with my ‘real’ luggage; I wouldn’t be needing my ordinary clothes on this trip, after all.

I headed down to the basement, hoping to find it as empty as six in the morning suggested it would be. The office building had a mini-gym, which was a grander name than two exercise bikes and a broken treadmill would normally command, and an even mini-er laundry room, but crucially it also had a shower. And it had a pile of disposable shower caps, a resource I lacked at home, so I wouldn’t have to wrap a towel around the hair extensions.

I dumped the luggage by the treadmill, stripped, threw the sweaty clothes from last night and the tucking knickers in the washer-dryer, stuck it on ‘refresh’ (which was a setting I’d never seen anywhere else that hit your clothes with five minutes’ soap, five minutes’ water, ten minutes’ ultra-fast spin and ten minutes’ heat; I’d always assumed it was intended for the executive in a hurry who’d slept in their work clothes, but maybe the designers had spared a thought for what panicked crossdressers might need, I don’t know) and stepped into the shower.

The hot water didn’t have the invigorating effect on me I’d been hoping for. I still felt enervated after a night of bad dreams and whatever the hell that had been in my bathroom before I’d gone to bed. Whenever I felt the wheels of introspection start turning in my head I carefully and deliberately redirected them; I couldn’t afford to be a mess today, or at any point over the long weekend, and I knew myself well enough to know that once I got started thinking about something unpleasant I’d have trouble stopping.

I resolved to just accept certain facts about myself — I was bisexual, fine; I was attracted to James, fine — and deal with the implications when I could dedicate a good solid couple of days to thinking about them. It finally gave me the boost I’d been hoping for, and I hopped out of the shower a good deal more refreshed and optimistic than I probably had any right to be. I wrapped myself in a couple of complementary towels and settled down to wait for my clothes to be done.

  


  


Putting on the bra and popping in the boobs was becoming routine, and I was even getting used to putting on the dreadful tucking knickers (reach down, push _back_ with your middle finger and _up_ with the fingers next to it, and then pull your underwear up quickly with your other hand before your junk works out what you’re trying to do to it). But even with my genitals jacked up right into my subconscious I couldn’t wear the new bum pads with my tracksuit trousers, so I was feeling top-heavy as I headed up to the office. I examined myself in the semi-reflective elevator walls and confirmed that, yes, I had a flat butt. At least the trousers and the underwear were fresh from the dryer (and only slightly damp) and would keep me warm until the heating clicked on at 8am.

The next task was going to be a challenge: makeup. If I was going to just accept the things I’d learned about myself and deal with them when I had the time, then I had to go along with the fairly large part of me that was suddenly squeamish about the idea of James seeing me as a man. As much as it made no sense when I thought about it — he’d known me for years and I’d been a man the whole time (well, a boy, really; even at nineteen I couldn’t bring myself to use the word _man_ because it didn’t seem right for me yet, like I hadn’t earned it) — I didn’t have the energy to deny it any more. If last night was anything to go by, then I was just hurting myself by pretending something hadn’t changed in me. Future Alex could deal with the fallout; I owed it to him to make it that far.

If I wanted James to find me attractive, and if because of that I needed him to see me as a… a… _not-boy…_ (Oh God, why was the word _woman_ almost as hard for me to claim as _man?_ Where _was_ all this shame even coming from? _Later_ , Alex; later. Start again.)

If I wanted James to see me only when I was dressed as a woman, then I couldn’t rely on Ben happening to show up first and I-Dream-of-Jeannie-ing me into someone who made James catch his breath when he looked at me. I’d have to do it myself.

I emptied my handbag out onto my desk, but there wasn’t enough stuff in there to do a proper job on my face; just lip gloss and a powder compact. I’d thought there was more, but I must have been thinking of my old handbag, the one I’d had in the restaurant. I stuffed everything back in, checked the time — coming up to 7am — slung the handbag over my shoulder, and headed back downstairs to the mini-gym to check myself out in the full-length mirror.

With the boobs on under the relatively snug hoodie I had enough shape even without the bum pads that I didn’t think anyone would look twice at me. Yes, I had a flat butt, but lots of women have flat butts. The big question was my face. I’d stuck some lip gloss on in the elevator down, but there was nothing particularly transformative about that; I could still see _me_ , peeking out from under all the hair. I honestly couldn’t tell if I looked different enough just from the hair and the body shape or if I would excite comment the moment I stepped out onto the street.

“Oh, hey,” said a voice.

I’m pretty sure I didn’t jump. A guy I vaguely recognised as working somewhere else in the building was standing in the entrance to the shower area, an outer layer of shed gym clothes in his hand. I tried to remember his name: Vikram, I thought. He was glistening with sweat.

“Coming or going?” he asked.

“Huh?” I said, winning a handful more prizes for intelligence and quick-wittedness.

He pointed past me to the cubicles. None of the basement facilities were split by sex, which I remembered with a start at the exact same moment I realised that was probably a good thing for me: it meant I couldn’t be caught coming out of the ‘wrong’ cubicle, depending on how I looked at the time.

“Are you done with the showers?” he said, smiling.

Okay, he was smiling. Good news, probably. “Um, yes,” I said. “I’m just on my way out.”

He dumped his hoodie on the bench and took off his t-shirt — he was more slender than James, but still nicely-built overall; he looked perhaps like a runner or a swimmer — and then reached out a hand to me. “I’m Vikram,” he said. “I work at Coopers, on the fourth floor.” Some kind of consultancy outfit, I think. Education, maybe? “Are you new?”

 _Was_ I new? “Yes,” I hazarded. “At McCain.” I took his hand and shook it; he had a good, strong grip.

“Ah, the computer people,” he said.

“That’s us.”

“What’s your name?”

“Alex,” I replied, without thinking. Shit. Would he remember me? We hadn’t exactly talked a lot.

“Hi, Alex,” he said, finishing the handshake. He was still smiling, so I think I got away with it. “I hope I see you here again.”

I smiled at him in return, and escaped the basement, forever grateful to my parents for choosing a name that was plausibly unisex, as if they knew I would turn out to be a massive dumbass.

  


  


I made it to the retail park shortly after it opened, and after a few minutes’ confused browsing in the cosmetics aisle at Superdrug I gave up on trying to find direct substitutes for the products I remembered Ben using on me. So I picked up a makeup gift set, of the sort you might buy a teenage cousin if you were a patronising and rather inappropriate uncle, and a tube of liquid foundation that I colour-matched against the back of my hand, the way I was fairly sure you were supposed to. The girl behind the counter treated me with the bored indifference I always hoped for from people who worked in shops (I hated when it seemed like they were happy to see me; I knew from experience it meant their bosses were forcing them to act that way, and it was impossibly tiring to do that all day) and I was back at the office by seven-thirty.

I went back to the YouTube makeup tutorials I’d looked at before, but couldn’t really see how they applied to my own personal face, so I kept clicking until I found someone who not only explained every step clearly and carefully but took ten minutes at the start of the video to go through all the tools one might or might not have access to, and the proper care thereof. The only thing I didn’t have was primer, but I figured I could cope without, and after a few attempts — there was a travel bottle of cleanser and some cotton wool in my handbag, thank God, or Ben — I decided I was good e-fucking-nough.

Ben could, and inevitably would, re-do me at the hotel, anyway, when I had to put on that awful garish dress I was trying not to think about, so I figured I didn’t have to be perfect; I just had to silence the voice in my head that panicked about James seeing me the ‘wrong’ way.

I was just debating whether or not to go back out to the retail park and pick up some nicer clothes than the hoodie and tracksuit bottoms I was still wearing, when James walked in.

I couldn’t help but smile when I saw him, but I do have to admit that the short period between him coming in through the office front door and him noticing me, sat at my desk, grinning at him like an idiot, was one of the more nerve-racking of my life. We’d made up yesterday evening, certainly, but I’d all but run out of the office after we hugged, and I’d sent him kind of a terse text message afterwards. He could very well have been in a mood with me.

He wasn’t. He answered my smile with one of his own, and dropped the cases he was towing as I almost ran over to him. I hugged him with all the enthusiasm I had inside me, because I was done pretending I didn’t want to. Screw reticence. He returned the hug with one arm; the other was still tangled up in various large cloth bags.

“Hi, Alex,” he said warmly. “You feeling okay this morning?”

I was right. He’d been worrying about me. “Yes,” I said honestly.

He must have sensed something in my voice, though, because he asked, “You sure?”

“I had a difficult night,” I admitted, releasing him from the hug and relieving him of the cloth bags, which I started to lug over towards the formerly empty desk in the corner we’d earmarked for expo crap, “and kind of a difficult morning, but…”

My pause was clearly enough to spark concern. “But…?” he prompted.

I dropped the bags off and hoisted myself up on the desk, remembering a moment after I did so the fantasy I’d had about him the night before. I tried not to blush, and was predictably unsuccessful.

“I decided to change my attitude,” I said. “You were right: I _am_ having fun. And yes, it’s scary sometimes, and yes, it’s knocking my head about a bit. But I think some of what was causing me trouble was, I suppose, fighting against the realisation that I’m actually kind of okay with it. You know? Worrying about what it ‘means’—” I finger-quoted, “—that I’m enjoying myself.”

James’ smile couldn’t have been wider. “Good,” he said. “Because I’ve been worrying that—”

“Don’t,” I interrupted. “You agreed to make this easy for me, which I _so_ appreciate. It’s time for me to make it easier for myself.” I hopped off the desk and fetched my handbag from mine. “Just don’t do anything that’ll make me regret this,” I added, wagging a finger. “Want some coffee?”

“Oh, uh, sure,” he said.

“How do I look, by the way?” I asked, walking back over to him. “I know, jogging clothes and all that, but I did my own makeup this morning, for the drive up, so… how do I look?”

He looked at me for a few seconds, and the warring expressions on his face made me desperate to know what he was thinking, but I resisted the urge to beat it out of him.

“Really good,” he said at last. “Like, _really_ good.”

I beamed at him.

  


  


It was almost like old times. We drank coffee and chatted about nothing in particular, lounging around the office in a terribly unprofessional way. James sat with his legs propped up on some box files that were undoubtedly full of vital documents, and I reclined next to him in the only office chair that went back all the way (which was his; I always stole it from his office at times like this). The only difference from normal was that I had cheekily propped one of my legs on top of his, just above the ankles. I had no idea what he thought about it, but I was enjoying the small, hot point of contact, and I could play it off as just ‘being in character’ if it really came to it.

Okay, it wasn’t the _only_ difference; the boobs, the makeup, the hair and the voice all come to mind, but I was used to them by now. The boobs were almost ignorable, the makeup was just a reason not to touch my face too much, the hair was all gathered up in a clasp because it had gotten kind of fluffy from the moisture in the air and I wanted it out of the way until Ben came and fixed it, and the voice was absolutely second nature at this point. But the prolonged physical contact with James was something else entirely. I luxuriated in it.

Some time shortly before 9am, while we were being sensible adults and actually discussing sales strategies for our software, Ben arrived, stumbling through our office door with all the grace and poise of someone who was, spiritually, still in bed. He, too, was towing a couple of huge suitcases behind him, and I felt a little guilty that I’d only had to lug a single one in from home. Mind you, I was probably also the only one of us who’d walked in.

We both waved at him.

“Why do you two look so disgustingly relaxed?” he said. “Are you aware of the time?”

“It’s not _that_ early,” James said. “It’s almost nine.”

“Yes, James,” Ben said, glaring at him. “It _is_ almost nine. Have you picked up the dresses from the tailor yet?”

“Fuck,” James said. “I’d better go.”

I lifted my leg off of his, to let him out. As he left, he ran his hand along the back of my chair, casually, just to steady himself; the way his fingers brushed against the back of my neck was definitely a coincidence.

Ben narrowed his eyes. “Why is your hair up?” he asked me.

I undid the clasp and let it fall as it chose. “Went fluffy,” I explained.

“Oh my god.”

  


  


Ben acquiesced to my demands to avoid an early death by in-car embolism caused by an uncomfortable skirt and grudgingly let me wear jeans, and while I’m sure they were very, very expensive Harvey Nicks jeans they were not actually all that comfy. But it was still better than the array of fancies he dangled in front of me, trying to persuade me to injure myself purely on the basis of aesthetics. When he realised he wasn’t going to win, he compensated with a nice but alarmingly low-cut white top which somehow managed to keep the store-bought nature of my boobs a secret, and a loose tweed jacket that I thought looked really ugly on the hanger but worked surprisingly well once it was on me. I got to keep my trainers. He swapped out my handbag for a slightly larger cross-body one in black, with more pockets. I approved.

“I saw you two together, you know,” he said as he fussed with my hair. “Sitting there on top of each other.”

“I know,” I said. “And if you want to say what I think you want to say, you can say it.”

“You won’t get mad?”

I sighed. “I’ve decided that for as long as _this_ lasts—” I indicated, with a sweep of my hand, _me_ , “I’m going to just go with it. So, yes, I like James. _Yes_ , I like him _that way._ I don’t know why, because I’ve never liked guys before, but I like him.” He grinned and nudged me. “God, I _really_ like him…”

“So, why now?”

“I’m not sure,” I said honestly, and thought about it. It was refreshing to do so without most of my brain screaming at me, telling me I shouldn’t. “Two nights ago, when you first dressed me up, and James came back, and you said…”

“Something obscene about his dick, I think,” Ben put in when I trailed off.

I nodded. “At the time I think we were both watching him to get an idea if I passed, but maybe that was the turning point. You said that when he saw me he was—” I blushed, “—turned on, and that’s when it hit me. That’s when I started thinking about it. Or a small part of me did, anyway. The rest of me was still loudly insisting I was a straight guy.”

He poked me. “We’ve all been there.”

I poked him back.

“So it’s really just been these last two days?” Ben asked.

“Well…” I considered it. “I guess it’s always been easy for him to get me to do stuff. Work stuff!” I added when I saw the look Ben gave me. “Stay late, work on extra projects, and so on. He brought me on only as a favour, I’m pretty sure, because our families know each other, mine’s a mess, and I was going nowhere after school, but then I got pretty good and we started working together a lot.” I frowned. “I never resented the long hours because I liked spending time with him.”

Ben tapped me on the head. “Kinda slow, aren’t you?” he said.

“Very slow,” I agreed. “So, you were at uni with him, right?”

Ben looked at me warily. “Yes?”

“Is he, like, into guys? Guys like me?” Even with my newfound candour, it was hard to say. But I had to say it; I had to know.

“He’s not into guys, no,” Ben said. I tried not to be crushed. “Not in an overt way, and not in a painfully-obviously-closeted way like you were, either. And he had opportunity; as you can imagine, when we went out together, guys would approach him. He turned them all down, even when he wasn’t dating anyone else. He’s _definitely_ straight. But,” he added, and I was hanging so pathetically on his every word that I perked up, “don’t forget that he responded to _you_ the other night. Not to just any guy, but very specifically _you_.”

I swallowed, unable to get my heart rate under control. “What do you think that means?”

“Honestly? I don’t know. I _do_ know he’s been kind of obsessing over you ever since that night at the restaurant.” I raised my eyebrows: _obsessing?_ “You know,” Ben continued, and he flipped into a bad impression of James’ voice, “‘Do you think she’ll be safe at the expo? Do you really think hair extensions will be more comfortable for him? I really pissed her off today, what do you think I should do?’ God, it’s been endless. Yesterday afternoon especially. And yes, he keeps flipping pronouns; I don’t know what to make of _that_ at all. He might be more comfortable around drag than most straight men thanks to me, but he never really _got_ the whole fluidity of gender thing. In _that_ he is most definitely a normal straight man: ‘Gender hard; sex easy; put penis in now?’”

I closed my eyes and concentrated on my breathing for a few moments. Ben’s little monologue had taken me on a journey and I needed time to process it; the voice in my head that wanted to stop all this and run away was alarmed at how happy the rest of me was at the merest remote possibility that James was interested in me.

When I calmed down, I opened my eyes and asked, “So, do you think I have a chance?”

Ben considered it. “A week ago, I’d’ve said no. But now…” he shrugged, “anything’s possible.”

  


  


I swear, there is no experience in the world quite like your first ten steps after a two-hour car journey. Your first couple of steps are wobbly and uncertain as your spine has to rediscover that you actually still possess muscles below your waist; the next few are sore and a little tingly as your body overcompensates and pumps out all the blood that had been sitting, unused, in your feet, replacing it with fresh, new, exciting blood at perhaps twice the rate that would be wise; and the next two steps are downright dangerous as your brain finally catches up with the situation and gets mad about all the blood and oxygen it used to have. After that, if you’re still upright you’re basically fine, and nothing else the day can throw at you will be a challenge at all.

Birmingham was refreshingly clear-skied compared to London. I walked a full circle around the ugly fountain out front of our hotel, enjoying the way I wasn’t getting low-key rained on just for being outside.

Ben had added a second suitcase to the one I’d brought from home, and had made dark enough threats about its contents that I had a horrible suspicion there was more in there than just the Harvey Nicks haul. I’d have to wait to get to my hotel room to find out what horrors he had in store for me, though, because we’d travelled up with the two engineers who’d be helping us out on the show floor, and they either didn’t remember me — to be fair to them, we’d only met once before, and I haven’t always been a very memorable person — or were too polite to mention the boobs I’d grown; whichever it was, we didn’t feel comfortable talking about dresses in front of them.

One advantage of being McCain Applied Computing’s resident woman — at least for the purposes of this trip — was that Ankit (“Kit, please.”) and Markus (“Just Mark.”), our engineers, insisted I be relieved of any responsibility for lugging our kit around or setting it up, so they got to go on ahead to the venue in the minivan with all the heavy stuff and my responsibilities were reduced to just picking up all our room cards from the hotel staff.

Which is when I discovered the problem.

I waved James and Ben over when they came trotting in, trailing their own luggage. I’d staked out a corner of the lobby where it looked like we wouldn’t be overheard.

I had my serious face on, so James asked, “What is it?”

“We only have three hotel rooms between us,” I said. “We had six before.” I spread the room cards out on the table like they were a hand in poker.

I watched James’ face fall in real time. “Oh, fuck,” he said, “I cancelled some of the rooms the other day, when we lost those two models and we swapped out my cousin for Ben. I must have forgotten to verify how many rooms we had total.”

I nodded, following the logic. “I’d planned to spread the three models across a single and a double, but I understand why you cancelled two of the rooms if you were thinking two models equals two rooms. Why cancel Ben’s room, though?”

“I thought Ben and I could room together, like old times,” he said, looking sheepish.

“That’s sweet,” Ben said. “Dumb, but sweet.”

“Okay,” I said, “let’s think about this. We have three rooms and six people. I think it goes without saying that Emily gets one of the rooms to herself.” They both nodded. “So she gets the single. It’s the smallest but she won’t have to share.” I pushed her card away from the other two. “Which leaves us three, and Kit and Mark.”

“Maybe you should have a room to yourself,” James told me.

“Lovely thought,” I said, “but that would leave four adults in one room. It’d be horribly uncomfortable and the hotel would probably throw a fit if they found out. And do you want to explain to Kit and Mark why you’re sharing a room with them when you’re the CEO?” I resisted the urge to smack him around the head.

“What sort of rooms are left?” Ben asked.

“A single and a double,” I said. “The double has two queen-size beds; the single has one king-size.”

“I assume they have sofas or comfy chairs that could accommodate someone reasonably well,” James mused. “Clearly, you—” he indicated me, “—need to be roomed away from both the engineers and Emily because none of them know you’re not a real woman.”

I don’t know why it cut me to the bone, but it did. I started hearing static, and I got top-heavy, the way I sometimes do when I’m about to have a really long cry, so before the shakes and the unpleasant noises set in I grabbed the card for the single room off the table and ran for the elevator. God must have been looking down on me in that moment because just as I approached, the doors opened and an old woman emerged, blinking slowly at me. She stepped aside to let me past but blocked the doors with her body.

“Are you going to be okay, dear?” she asked.

I had enough presence of mind to nod. “I just need to lie down,” I said. I well and truly had the shakes by this point, and it gave my voice vibrato.

Behind her, I could see Ben’s arm across James’ chest, stopping him from coming after me. My chest pounded with a frantic need to escape.

“I’ll be in the hotel bar if you need to talk to anyone,” the old lady said, smiling at me and patting me on the shoulder. Then she let me be, and the lift doors closed.

I watched my reflection in the mirrored elevator walls like a hawk. I looked for all the world like an attractive young woman who’d just received some bad news. But that’s not what I was, was it? It was a lie, wasn’t it? I was a lie. A fake. The hair, the makeup, the tits, the voice, all of it was just a convenience, part of a stupid little confluence of circumstances that had put me here, in this lie, so we could sell our fucking software.

When I got to the room I collapsed onto the bed and disappeared for a while.

  


  


“Alex?”

I was really starting to hate the sound of my own name. Nothing good ever came of it. Grudgingly, I opened my eyes. It took me a moment to orient myself: I was in one of the hotel rooms, the one with the king-size bed, which I’d thrown myself onto with all the violence I could muster. I’d had enough presence of mind to tuck an arm under my head, so I hadn’t stained the bedsheets with the makeup I’d cried off.

Ben had a gentle hand on my leg. He looked like he could wait all day for me, but I knew we didn’t have time, so I sniffed — which sounded disgusting — and sat myself up.

“Hi, Ben,” I said. “I know, this isn’t the time to have hysterics. I’m fucking things up, aren’t I?”

“No,” he said. “Absolutely not.” And then, to reassure me, he added, “Kit and Mark are getting our stand set up. Emily is already there, and I sent James over there to deal with anything else that needs dealing with. The show floor doesn’t open for two hours. You have time.”

I shrugged. “Time for what? I don’t know what I’m _doing_ , Ben. I don’t know why I’m so upset.”

He put a hand on my cheek and stroked my cheekbone with his thumb. “I have an idea about why,” he said.

I looked at him, almost afraid to ask. But what more could this weekend do to me, really? How much more could I change?

“Tell me,” I said.

“This is more than dressing up for you, isn’t it?” he said. “And it’s more than realising you’re attracted to men.”

“I don’t know what you mean,” I mumbled. I really didn’t. “Maybe.” What else was there?

“Tell me what you _do_ know,” Ben said. “Tell me _why_ it upset you when James said you’re not a real woman. What do you think that says about you?”

I closed my eyes. Even the echo of the words made my chest hurt. “I’m not sure,” I said slowly. “It felt… _insulting._ Like he was judging me. It felt like hearing that _should_ hurt me. But it makes no sense. I’m not…”

I fell silent. Ben, bless him, let me think.

What _did_ I know? I knew I was into James. And I knew James was straight — straight enough that living with a drag queen for years and having a bunch of gay friends and acquaintances didn’t make him question his sexuality. So however much he might see me as a woman right now, and be attracted to me on that basis, he knew I wasn’t a woman, and that therefore we had no future except as friends. Which hurt enough to think about that it _had_ to be it; I’d so latched on to the idea that James was into me that the reminder that he _couldn’t_ be was enough to make me lose it.

They do say your first crush is the most intense, and I’d never been into someone like I was into James.

Now, it seemed like Ben was implying I was transgender, but I knew I wasn’t. Not in the I’m-a-real-woman inside kind of way. When Ben talked about trans women the day before I’d filed the idea that I might be transgender away in the back of my mind to think about, but in the cold light of day I couldn’t see how I possibly could be. People who were transgender knew their whole life; you saw news reports about kids and young teenagers who were doing it, and I was nineteen. I would _know_ by now, of that I was completely certain. I wouldn’t be idly considering it, I’d be _consumed_ by the need to— to— to do whatever the term for officially switching genders was. Get a sex change? I couldn’t imagine having that kind of strength of feeling.

“I think what it says about me,” I said slowly, “is that I’m really not dealing well with the fact that James is straight.”

“Are you sure that’s all it is?” Ben said.

“I’m sure,” I said, shaking my head, “I think I know what you’re getting at, but I don’t think that’s it. I’m bi, I’m into James, he’s almost definitely not into me, and processing all that is messing with my equilibrium. That’s all.”

I couldn’t be transgender. The very idea was ridiculous. I was just being my usual suggestible self, like last night, alone in my shitty little flat, exhausted from stress and practically seeing things. Ben had put the idea in my head, yesterday in James’ flat, my subconscious had run with it, and before I knew it I’d started freaking out at my own reflection. I do stuff like that; I’m a panicker.

In the cold light of day, it was clear to me that I was just spinning out a little. Like anyone would, packing a major revelation about their sexuality into the middle of a packed weekend’s crossdressing.

“I think you need to talk about this,” Ben said.

“Thanks,” I replied, “but I think we need to get moving, honestly. I’ve only got two hours to get cleaned up, get dressed, and get to the expo before it starts.” I was feeling pretty stupid for my overreaction now; I wanted to be _doing something_ , not waste any more time talking.

“Alex,” Ben interrupted sternly. “Don’t push yourself too hard. You can afford to take some time.”

“Ben,” I said, as kindly as I could manage, “I can’t leave Emily down there alone. Oh, and don’t say anything about this to James, please.”

Ben frowned. “Are you sure?”

It was occurring to me that I’d spent the last couple of days falling down a very peculiar rabbit hole, and there was no way out but through. So I’d keep going, but I wouldn’t come to any grand conclusions about my identity while I was still tumbling down.

It was time to assert some boundaries in my own head. I could have fun this weekend, sure, but that’s all it was: a bit of fun, a chance to play at being someone totally different from myself. And I’d get home Sunday night, strip all this off, sleep the sleep of the dead, take Monday off because fuck going into work after a weekend like this, and I’d be fine.

“I’m sure,” I said, trying to inject some certainty into my voice. “I’ll talk to him myself. I just need to relax and get through this without going mad. If there really _is_ anything to think about afterwards, and I really don’t think there will be—” Ben looked like he wanted to interrupt me, so I raised my voice and steamrollered him, “—then I’ll think about it _next week_ , in the comfort on my own home.”

“I’m worried about you,” Ben said.

“Don’t be,” I said. “Please. I got carried away, that’s all.”

He looked skeptical. 

  


  


I was profoundly grateful to my past self for taking the time to go through the sample dress images the tailors had sent and find one that wasn’t either too showy or too revealing. At the time, my motivation had been that I didn’t want our company to look like it was run by horny teenage boys, and I didn’t want to lumber the models with something too uncomfortable. Of course, this was before I knew exactly what ‘uncomfortable’ meant when it came to wearing a dress. If I could have had five minutes alone with Past Me I’d probably have suggested something that wasn’t quite so tight around the waist; right before I told him to run for his life.

The dress was bright blue with yellow accents — the company colours — and while it did have a knee-length skirt, something I’d requested specifically, it also had a three-inch slit I wasn’t particularly happy about. It covered my shoulders but not my arms, and the neckline was fairly high. Overall, it wasn’t _too_ bad. If you took a photo (so you couldn’t tell how weirdly shiny it was) and almost completely desaturated the colours (and cropped out the company logo on the chest) it could pass for an extremely tacky church dress.

I felt very silly, but at least you couldn’t see my thighs unless I sat down. It wasn’t even the most revealing thing I’d worn out; that prize went to the ice queen getup.

“You’re good?” Ben said. I think he was standing so I couldn’t see him in the mirror in order for me to really absorb the full effect. It was working; the particular shade of blue we used was giving me a headache.

“I’m good,” I said. Ben had worked his usual magic with my hair and face. I looked less like my normal self than I had even after doing my own makeup, which helped when it came to getting into character.

“Good,” Ben said, nodding. He passed me a long black coat — God bless him again, it was calf-length, modest, and made me look like a film noir femme fatale in her I-definitely-didn’t-murder-him outfit — and we rushed out together.

  


  


The convention hall was larger than I’d imagined. I’d seen the specs when I was organising all this, but in person it was quite something else. Ben and I walked past companies that had whole wings to themselves, and even though it was these very companies that James wanted to court I started to feel nervous about our place in all this. Would we even be noticeable next to these huge names?

McCain Applied Computing’s spot was in a relative rats’-maze of booths in the small vendors section of the hall, next to a couple of companies I’d never heard of (and who I highly doubted had ever heard of us). We weren’t the only ones to have models, either, which was a relief; in the Uber over I’d entertained a fear that Emily and I would be the only people dressed like idiots on the show floor, but the two women standing at the booth next to ours were dressed as sexy stewardesses.

Emily was chatting with them. Unlike me, she looked fantastic in our branded dress, but then she was the model and I was the… me. She waved at us when she spotted us coming, which seemed to summon James from wherever he was lurking behind our booth setup. Yeah, he looked worried. I was going to have to deal with him.

Emily called my name. I smiled at her and joined her and the other two models at the intersection of our booth and theirs. Ben, thankfully, intercepted James and they started a whispered conversation on the other side of our booth.

“This is Maria and Kristen,” Emily said, indicating the stewardesses, “and this is Alex. She’s a veteran; been modelling for… how long, Alex?”

I could spot a prompt when I saw one. I looked at a non-existent watch on my wrist, and said, “At least forty-eight hours now.”

It got a polite laugh, which was enough for me. I exchanged smiles with Kristen and Maria, and briefly covered Emily’s hand with mine when she grasped my upper arm in greeting.

“I love the coat,” she said.

“Ben gave it to me,” I said. “I had no idea he had it; I think he’s trying to save me some embarrassment.”

“Is it working?” Emily asked, as I shucked off the coat, revealing myself to be just as ridiculously-dressed underneath as she was.

“No,” I said, and grimaced.

“You look fine,” she whispered.

“Thanks. Oh,” I added, “did you get your room key?”

“Yes, from Ben,” she said, nodding. “He’s really sweet, isn’t he?”

“Yeah, he’s— oops.” James had extricated himself from Ben and was coming over.

“Alex,” he said gravely, “do you have a moment?”

I nodded. As we walked to a spot where we could have some limited privacy, I heard Emily say to the stewardesses, “He’s her boss, and they have _history…_ ”

“Before you apologise,” I whispered to James when I was sure we were out of earshot, “I want you to know you don’t need to.”

“I’m still sorry,” James said quietly.

“I think, maybe, that I’m still getting acclimatised to this,” I said, careful to choose words that wouldn’t be revealing if we were overheard. “I panicked, that’s all. Ben helped me put my head back on.”

He looked relieved. “I thought I’d really upset you.”

I gave him a friendly punch on the arm. “I’m good,” I insisted. “It was a blip. I’m over it.”

“Sure?”

“Sure,” I said. “Shall we sell some software?”

“Definitely,” he said, grinning.

Together we headed back round to the front of the booth. I rejoined Emily, who was leafing through her pile of printed materials.

“All good?” she said. I nodded. “Good, because the doors open in two minutes.”

I squared my shoulders, controlled my breathing, and looked out across the show floor. The bigger booths were pretty quiet, but most of the smaller companies like ours were still a flurry of activity as people rushed to make last-minute preparations. I put on my lanyard, smiled at Kristen and Maria, who were adjusting their terrible little stewardess hats, and fixed my eye on the countdown clock hanging from the ceiling in the centre of the conference hall.

 _You can do this,_ I told myself. _Play your role, have some fun, and then go home and never think about this ever again._

It was going to be fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Went kind of overboard with the italics this chapter.


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I originally decided to upload this on a new account, aiming to keep my fanfic and my original fic separate.
> 
> Two weeks later I decided that was a daft decision, so now it's on both accounts. So it doesn't have two authors; they're both just me.

I got used to being out on the show floor pretty quickly. It was boring sometimes, especially when the others at my booth were all busy and I had no-one to talk to. It was a little creepy sometimes, when a guy stood too close to me and brushed his hand against my arm. But mostly it was quite fun. There were times when I felt unexpectedly glamorous, standing there in my very silly dress, selling our software, having my picture taken (although we were less photographed than Kristen and Maria, the stewardesses next door). Friday at the expo was a closed session, with only representatives from other companies and a few select journalists supposed to be allowed in; Emily told me I was lucky my first modelling experience was on a relatively quiet day because Saturday, when the doors opened to the public, was likely to be crazy.

Emily was looking out for me, which helped me feel a bit more free to enjoy myself. A rep from a smaller company approached me when I was taking a momentary breather, resting on one of the stools we had at the side of the booth and shifting at least some of my weight distribution from my heels to my butt, but before he could get close enough to talk Emily inserted herself between us, smiling, asking him his name and who he represented, and guiding him so subtly over to the other side of the booth I don’t think he noticed he was being manipulated.

After he left, she explained.

“If you’re sitting down and guys come over,” she said, “sometimes they take that as an opportunity to get closer to you, and especially to put their hands on your legs.” I made a face. “They act like it’s all casual and friendly, but they’re just copping a feel. If you’re standing, it creates a bit more distance; it’s more formal. They have to be that much more of a creep to try anything.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’ve been to these things before — well, one of these things — but I never expected to be in this position, and it’s still kind of disorientating.” I looked down at myself. “I mean, there’s never having been so dressed up before, and there’s never having been so _on show_ before. I feel like I should buy a taser.”

“The important thing is just to keep your distance. If they really do try anything we can yell for security — or for Mr McCain when he gets back,” she added, smiling and nudging me. I chose to pretend I hadn’t heard that last part, which she noticed. “Poor guy. He’s being so nice to you today! Maybe give the lovesick thing a break?”

Emily was still on the James-loves-Alex train, which I had very much leapt off of between stations (I was now, to extend the metaphor, fiddling with Google Maps, trying to work out which was the easiest way back to Skegness, or, er, manhood). Her convictions on that front had only deepened when James spent the first half-hour of the open floor hovering near me, glaring at conventioneers, practically bodyguarding me. I’d finally got fed up and asked him to let me have a little space, which had sent him into a two-minute sulk. He’d then made the excuse that he needed to go change for a big meeting with a huge corporation, and vanished.

“I _gave_ him a break,” I protested. “And then he left.”

“Hmm,” Emily commented, sounding remarkably like Ben. It suddenly occurred to me that the two of them had probably gossiped about me while Ben was doing her makeup, and the idea was distasteful; I resolved to find him later and insert both my high heels into him somewhere. “As I was saying,” she continued, “keep your distance, and enforce it as much as you can. If you judge it safe to shake someone’s hand, that’s fine; if you judge it safe for someone to take a posed photo with you, even a selfie, that’s fine. But _you_ make the judgements. Take as much control of the interaction as you need. And if they cross the line you set, don’t be afraid to ask for help, from me or the boys, or from security.”

“If we make a fuss, won’t _they_ make a fuss?” I asked, worrying about losing MCAC a sale because of my squeamishness.

Emily gave me a serious look. “One, your safety is more important than the product; and don’t protest because you _know_ your boss agrees.” I protested anyway, but inside. “Two, while I’d love to say in 2019 that most of these reps’ bosses wouldn’t want a whole Hash Me Too thing on their hands, it’s definite that _some_ of them wouldn’t. So don’t be afraid to assert your boundaries.”

“Thanks,” I said again. I was thanking her a lot today. “That’s actually really helpful.” I squashed the urge to give her a hug; she was seriously big-sistering me and as an only child (of parents who were… questionably present at the best of times) it was blowing a lot of relays in my head. She reached out and squeezed my upper arm anyway, and I gripped her hand in gratitude. “Hey,” I added, suddenly struck by one of my periodic bouts of self-consciousness, “you really don’t think I look silly?”

“You look great!” she said, for the ten-thousandth time.

Without access to a mirror to periodically reset my default view of myself as a questionably-presentable borderline troglodyte, I was having a regular-as-clockwork crisis of confidence. I hadn’t thought of myself as shallow before, but it turned out large parts of my self-image were based around not being looked at by hundreds of people and not being surrounded by women who were all really, really good at the same thing I was trying to do. All the women in the conference hall — all the women in very silly outfits, anyway — were drop-dead gorgeous, Emily, Maria and Kristen included, and hell, the other women, the ones who were there in more sensible clothes, still all seemed to ooze a grace and poise that was beyond me. I was an imposter, suddenly very aware of my fake boobs and my padded hips and bum, too aware of the shape and feel of my body, too aware of its ugly, shapeless maleness; apparently in agreement, my junk chose that moment to complain about its entrapment, twanging a nerve in my scrotum that caused a flash of pain when it hit my head and seemed to reverberate around inside me.

Emily, naturally, spotted that I wasn’t all that reassured this time — I was starting to think that my every emotion was immediately readable on my face, like I was some kind of educational toy for kids to learn about the perils of insecurity — and added, “You really look good. Natural. Like you belong here. Um,” and she dropped into a whisper, “except when you look terrified like you suddenly do. Just calm down!”

I took and held a deep breath, counted to a billion, and let it out.

“Besides,” Emily said, amusement dripping from her voice, “when it comes down to it, we’re pretty ordinarily-dressed here. _And_ we don’t have to wear neon wigs or anything. You should thank whoever picked these outfits.”

“I picked them,” I said, still trying to internalise what Emily was saying. “I just never thought I’d end up wearing one of them.”

“Then thank _you_. I guarantee you half the models here are jealous of us.” She grimaced. “You should see some of the stuff I’ve had to wear at other events; crazy outfits like out of a video game. When you take your break, get out of this corner we’re stuck in and have a look at the other models, see what ridiculous shit they’re stuck in. Especially the big companies. Lots of money often equals lots of stupid accessories to lose. And temporary tattoos of the logo.”

“She’s right,” Maria said from the edge of her booth, having apparently overheard us. “I’d kill to be on your stand right now. Do you know how hard it is to keep the seam straight on these effing stockings? Oops,” she added, as man approaching her booth waved for her attention.

I laughed, feeling my tension, embarrassment and self-consciousness start to dissipate alongside each other.

“Thanks for keeping me from going crazy, Emily,” I said.

“No problem,” Emily said, smiling. “Are you okay to cover solo for fifteen minutes? I need to pee.”

I felt recharged, so I shooed her away. “Go, go! I’ll be fine. I can always yell for Kit to rescue me if someone gets weird.”

She flashed me a smile and disappeared in the direction of the maze of small rooms at the back of the convention hall. I watched her go — she really did look good in the dress, despite its obnoxious blueness — and fixed in my head the fact that this ridiculously beautiful woman thought I looked perfectly okay, and that therefore I probably _did_ look perfectly okay.

 _You’re fine, Alex,_ I told myself. _You’re just like everyone else here. Everyone else in a stupid outfit, anyway. You don’t stand out. You_ don’t _stand out._

I looked back out across the hall in time to see a boy who didn’t look much older than me trot up to our booth.

“Hi!” I said, in my customer service voice, which had turned out to be pretty ideal for talking to potentially-horny guys when I was wearing eye-catching clothing; approachable and friendly but absolutely professional. “Welcome to our stand. Is there anything you’d like to know about McCain Applied Computing or our products?”

“Um,” he said, and took a full two seconds to recover. His blush would have been visible from space if we weren’t indoors; I bet you could have spotted it with one of those heat-mapping satellites anyway, if you knew where to look. Remembering what Emily said about controlling the interaction, I took a step forward, so that we were only a metre apart, but knotted my hands in front of me, to establish that this was _my_ space. I liked looking down on someone for once; he was around my height, but I was in heels. I smiled at him, which only intensified his blush. I wasn’t worried about this kid trying anything; if it came to it I could probably have beaten him up myself without taking off my shoes first.

“Uh,” he rallied, “I read your company’s promotional post on, um, Reddit? And I was interested to learn more about your software.”

The boy looked like he was about to die of sheer nervousness, so I disentangled my fingers and extended a hand for him to shake. “I’m Alex,” I said, as he limply took my hand and sort of waggled it. I pointedly didn’t look down to see if his trousers tented; I pointedly also did not giggle at the thought of it. “I wrote that post. I’ve also had a hand in the code for most of our projects, although—” I disengaged from the handshake and shook a warning finger in what I hoped was an obviously light-hearted manner, “—I can’t give you a deep dive here on the show floor. What’s your name?” I added, when his only response was to swallow.

“Harry,” he said, after a good long think. I’d put a small bet on him having needed some time to remember his name. “I— I write for Rayleigh’s Journal.”

I was impressed. Rayleigh’s Journal was quite a big fish in the picayune-technical-details pond: a former print magazine, now entirely online, catering to the kind of technology nerd who never needs an acronym explained in the same way Loch Ness Monsters cater to credulous tourists. Or the same way salmon contribute to bears.

“Would you like to speak with one of our engineers?” I said, looking around. Mark was on his break, Kit was showing someone our only demo unit, and James was presumably still schmoozing people at his ‘big meeting’. “They’re all engaged at the moment, but I’m sure someone will be available to talk to you soon.” I wouldn’t have bothered for a random blogger, would have told him to come back later, but I didn’t want to take the chance on losing access to Rayleigh’s readership. I was kind of curious what they would say about our work, anyway.

“I can wait,” Harry said. “You have one of the more interesting software proposals on the floor today. Um, if it works.”

I smiled again, enjoying the way his eyes widened slightly when I did so. “I can assure you it does,” I said. “You need an OLED screen, or to be willing to accept a slight brightness loss in the pixels above the lens if you’re using IPS, but it definitely works.” I’d have shown him the selfies I’d taken with the prototype screen and lens assembly we’d commissioned to test it out, but I didn’t have my phone with me, and — I winced as I remembered, hoping it didn’t show — all the shots were of the old me, anyway. Not a good thing to show someone.

“Then I’d love to see it,” he said.

“Kit can show you when he’s free,” I said, “or Mark, or Mr McCain if he comes back before anyone else is free.” I decided to tell him a half-truth, or rather, to omit the inconvenient part: “I’d show you the selfies I took with it, but I’m not allowed a camera on the show floor.”

He swallowed. I realised I’d leaned towards him a little, as if sharing a scandalous secret, so I leaned back. A laugh I couldn’t quite suppress came out just as another smile.

I looked back at our booth and noticed Kit had finished showing off the demo phone. I reached back and picked it up, unspooling the wire that tethered it to our booth.

“Here,” I said, “why don’t I show you the demo unit?”

It wouldn’t pass as a modern phone even in low light — it was an older Samsung model from before they started doing the wraparound screens, and we’d hacked it apart to move the camera under the screen, so it was twice as thick as it should be — but it worked well enough. I unlocked it and paged through a couple of home screens, so he could see the screen working unimpeded, and then loaded up the camera software and handed it to him.

“Try and find the selfie camera,” I suggested.

Puzzled, he covered the place where the camera hole used to be, at the top of the phone, but he could still see his face, partially obscured by his palm. He slowly moved his finger down the screen until he finally found it, just below the centre. He covered and uncovered it, squinting at the image on the screen, looking for defects. I knew he wouldn’t find any; the implementation on our demo unit was carefully tuned to the subpixel layout on the OLED panel.

“This is incredible,” he said.

“Thanks!” I said.

He jumped. I don’t think he’d realised I was watching over his shoulder. I took a step back and held out my hand. Reluctantly he gave the unit back to me, and I replaced it in its cradle.

“What was your name again?” he asked, biting his lip and then realising what he was doing and hurriedly retracting his teeth. I tried not to laugh; I’d probably break his ego into a million bits. We were almost definitely around the same age, and cut from the same dorky cloth, but I’d never been as terrified of attractive women as he obviously was. Sure, they mostly hadn’t been _interested_ in me, but that was another thing entirely.

“Alex,” I said, and he nodded. I’d realised shortly after talking to my first rep on the show floor that I was giving my real name to a whole lot of people who’d now seen (and occasionally photographed) me in a dress — James couldn’t have engineered a more awkward situation if he’d tried — but I decided that on the remote chance any of them ever swung by the office, I could be my own cousin or something; we’d be from one of those cult families that gives everyone the same name. Perfect.

We were silent for a few moments. It was awkward, and Kit was still unavailable. “So, how did you come to work for Rayleigh’s?” I asked, to make conversation. I’d have tried to engage him on a technical level but one of the things we hadn’t had time for was to give me the same brief Kit and Mark had about what level of disclosure was appropriate, and I didn’t want to rely on common sense and guesswork. And when it came down to it, I _was_ just a gopher and not an actual engineer.

“Oh, um,” Harry said, and then sat on the _um_ for a bit while he thought. “I’m still at uni, so I’m only submitting the occasional article. My old project supervisor works as an editor at Rayleigh’s; he asked me to work for him.” When he mentioned his old supervisor a beam of pure joy temporarily replaced the nervously neutral expression on his face. “Part time,” he added. “He couldn’t attend CEE this year, so he sent me.”

It was like looking in a mirror, minus the university part and the general sweatiness; an older man, a mentor, someone he clearly liked, asked him to come work for him and later had him attend a trade show. I was half-tempted to warn Harry to run as fast as he could should his editor ever look at him with a gleam in his eye and suggest he try wearing a dress, just for a change.

We discussed his university project for a few minutes — he was working on an interesting idea to do with eliminating clipping artifacts in video games; not my field, but fascinating — and he came out of his shell a little. The shell was absolutely still there, and I could absolutely prompt a retreat back into it if I smiled at him too much, but he was doing pretty well! Pretty well.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Kit finishing up with the man he was talking to, so I put a hand on Harry’s shoulder — he jumped again, which was adorable — and made to guide him over.

“Oh, er,” Harry said, blushing again, “before I go, could I get a selfie? I mean, one I can keep.”

I laughed. “Sure!” I said.

He dug his phone out of his pocket and held it up, framing us on the screen. I put on my best smile, stuck one arm around his shoulders and did the peace sign with my other hand, for the hell of it. He snapped a couple, and I let him go.

He thanked me profusely.

“Old technology, now,” I said, indicating his phone.

It took a moment for him to get what I meant, and then he laughed far harder than the joke merited. Flatterer. “Um, yeah,” he said.

“It was nice meeting you, Harry,” I said. “Good luck at Rayleigh’s.”

I guided him over to Kit, made the introductions, patted him on the back, and returned to my position at the front of the stand, clamping down on my need to laugh as much as I could.

Being able to do that to guys was kind of _fun_.

  


  


“Alex,” Emily said urgently as she walked up next to me, her break over. “I just ran into Bethany from our agency and they’ve got her dressed up like a sexy cop!”

“Oh my God,” I said. “Can we see her from here?”

Emily narrowed her eyes and pointed. I looked and, sure enough, when the crowds parted, I caught occasional glimpses of four cops at one of the larger booths in the mid-size section of the floor, only police uniforms weren’t normally quite so shiny, and the skirts generally left more to the imagination.

“Holy shit,” I said. We both laughed, and I felt grateful once again to Past Me for not fucking us over with a ridiculously short skirt or anything. “God, I just saw one of them have to tug her skirt down. I feel bad for laughing.”

“Don’t, seriously,” Emily said. “At the last one of these, she got to wear jeans and I had to be a fucking _mermaid._ ”

“Oh no,” I said, “with the tail and everything?” She nodded. “How did—” I lowered my voice. “How did you pee?”

She shuddered. “They had to drop a curtain around the pedestal I was on, so it wouldn’t ‘break the illusion’—” air-quotes and an extremely derisive tone of voice, “—and I had to shimmy out of the fucking thing right up there and peg it out the back door. At least they let me wear leggings under it.”

“Wow,” I said.

“And other _there_ —” she pointed, “—is a bunch of girls dressed in what I _think_ is tin foil, with fairy wings, advertising something to do with steering wheels. No, I have no idea what the connection is supposed to be. I think those women _there_ are supposed to be some kind of knock-off She-Ra army, and you can’t see them from here but there’s a booth with like a dozen women all in the same wig and coordinated makeup and they even have different size heels on to make them all the same height, it’s _eerie_. Oh yeah, and whoever’s done the outfits for _that_ booth has a serious hard-on for platforms, look.”

I looked, and saw about five women who were wearing relatively simple skirt-and-jacket outfits but with platform boots that made my back ache just at the thought of wearing them. I wondered if it was supposed to symbolise something.

“God,” I muttered, “there are so many sadists in trade show costume design.”

Emily shrugged. “Sadists; straight men; what’s the difference?”

“I will never complain about a simple blue dress ever again,” I promised.

  


  


A short while later, one of the big brands announced some big demonstration event and almost instantly cleared out the entire convention hall as every rep, journalist and blogger disappeared in the direction of their huge booth. Kit and Mark, with some encouragement from me, followed; I wasn’t particularly bothered about going as I’d never been as interested in finished products as I was in the building blocks, and I knew they’d come running back in a panic if anything was announced that could trump one of our in-the-works projects, so I promised to field all inquiries in their absence.

Emily and Maria took advantage of the lull to make me practice doing ‘modelling poses’ — which, I maintained, don’t actually count as real modelling poses if you can’t stop giggling — that all coincidentally involved one hand or another stretched out, the better to keep eager businessmen at minimum safe distance. To my relief, the three of us almost immediately devolved into messing around, and then into bitching about our bosses. As models, we were officially discouraged from having our mobile phones on the show floor because most of us had outfits that didn’t allow for pockets or bags, and security had (in theory) better things to do than watch out for our valuables, like watch out for violations of our personhood, so bitching was basically all we had left once we’d run out of productive lines of conversation.

I was in the middle of telling the (edited) story of my first overnight stay at the office, when James had both promised to come back and help, and hadn’t, and neglected to tell me the heating turned off at 9pm, when the bottom fell out of my world.

He was on his way back, and he was wearing his best suit.

 _O_ _f course_ he was! He’d just made a presentation to a huge company and he would have wanted to make a good impression, so _of course_ he would have worn his best suit. It was just a coincidence that it was the same charcoal suit, off-white shirt and maroon tie he’d worn in the dream I’d had about him, that night at his place, surrounded by his sheets and his smell. The suit that had had a supporting role in the first real wet dream of my life. I felt my junk tense in its awful prison, and I clenched my teeth in response.

He was walking back to our booth and chatting to Kristen as he came.

 _Of course_ he was! Kristen was beautiful. Kristen was funny and friendly. Kristen was dressed as a sexy stewardess. Kristen (probably) didn’t have a dick. She was perfect for him.

It was a good thing, I insisted to myself. James deserved to be with someone who could make him happy.

“Alex,” Emily whispered quickly, “do you want to go on your break?”

I forced myself to focus, and noticed she had a hand on my shoulder. I nodded vigorously. What was the point of pretending to Emily any more that I didn’t have feelings for James? I’d stopped pretending to Ben; I’d stopped pretending to myself, despite a brief uptick in inward-focused stubbornness on that front. If everyone knew I was bi then what did it ultimately matter? Just as long as James didn’t find out.

“Go, go, go,” Emily said, gently pushing me out of the booth in the opposite direction.

I almost staggered as I escaped in the direction of the women’s staff loos. I’m fairly sure James watched me go.

  


  


If I held my breath, glared at myself in the mirror and kicked the bottom of the sink with my foot, I could keep from crying.

I looked around the bathroom to make sure I was alone. When I was certain I was, I started whispering sternly to my own reflection.

“You’re an idiot. I know you want him to like you back, I know you _need_ him to like you back, but it’s not going to happen. It can’t. And _you_ —” I pointed at myself, “—are confusing him by running hot and cold around him. No wonder he called you a bitch.”

Yes, I was still hung up on that. I didn’t seriously believe it was _my_ fault he said it, but something inside me was stuck on the idea and it kept coming up in moments like this.

“And you _are_ a crazy fucking bitch, _Alex_ ,” I hissed, really building up the venom now. “A crazy, stupid bitch! You want him, you want him like you’ve never wanted anyone else, but you keep asking yourself, ‘Is it just because I’m in a dress right now?’ as if these feelings will just— will just _go away_ on Monday morning. You stupid—” kick, “—stupid—” kick, “—stupid—” _kick,_ “—fucking, fucking _stupid bitch._ Look at you.”

Deep breath. Hold it. Let it out slowly.

“Alex,” I said to myself, “talking to yourself is one of the signs of madness. There’s a list somewhere. Although I bet whichever idiot drew up the list in the first place didn’t have an entry for putting on a dress at the behest of your boss, who you are hopelessly in love with, and parading around a huge conference hall in front of hundreds of people.”

Another deep breath.

_…Did I just say I was in love with James?_

Kick. Kick. _Kick._

  


  


“Nice break?” Emily said to me as I returned, a meaningful look on her face that I interpreted as, ‘I will cover for you as long as you need.’ After this, I decided right there and then, we were fucking well hiring her. We’d pay her all the money we wouldn’t be spending at Harvey Nichols any more.

“Yeah,” I said, taking up my place in front of the booth once more, “it really helped. Thanks.”

James almost immediately disengaged himself from the conversation he was having with Mark and rushed over to me. He touched my elbow. I let him.

“Hi, James,” I said, to forestall any more apologies or anything on his part. “Sorry I had to rush out like that; the bathroom called, you know?”

He nodded, dumbly. “Hey,” he said eventually, “I heard you sweet-talked the guy from Rayleigh’s into giving us a good write-up. He couldn’t _stop_ singing your praises.”

I smiled. “He just seemed kind of shy, is all,” I said. “A bit of a chat and he really blossomed.” Well, maybe a little green shoot finally grew out of the ground; kid would need a hundred beautiful women to ask him about his interests and take a selfie with him before he’d stop nervously staring at their shoulders instead of their faces. “Oh yeah, how did the meeting go?”

I’d decided, after I’d kicked the sink until my foot hurt, just to tough it out. If James wanted to talk to other women, that was for the best; he was never going to be my boyfriend, and that was just a fact. If I really did _love_ him — another confusing question for the pile — then I wanted the best for him.

The best for him was quite clearly not me.

“Really well, I think!” he said. “The longer I talked, the more I got the feeling we have something no-one else has. Something they really want. Their rep is going to bring us a couple of devkits later; next week, you and I have some work to do to get it working with their hardware. If it does…” He finished the sentence with a huge, boyish grin, his eyes warming and crinkling.

I carefully stopped my heart long enough to kill it.

“Congratulations!” I said happily, grasping his forearm with both hands and squeezing.

  


  


A burst of journalists, bloggers, and company reps who’d had a few drinks at lunch and thus had been less restrained than they ought when it came to respecting personal space had worn away at me. Emily saw it happening and, bless her, earned ten times her paycheque intercepting as many as she could, but they’d kept coming. I could see it wearing on her, too; by 5pm her smile had long since stopped reaching her eyes. When 6pm and the close of the doors approached, she looked like she would happily strangle and eat the next man who so much as looked at her, and I wanted nothing more than to rip off my dress and jump in a bath of acid.

I can’t put my finger on exactly when it stopped being remotely fun, but it could have been around the time Kristen came back from her late break with a Coke for her and a Coke for James. I really didn’t want to hate her — she was really nice — so I decided to hate James instead. It was difficult: I tried to glare at him but his tie really did bring out the deep brown in his eyes, and I couldn’t help thinking about that dream. It rattled me, how much I was focused on it, so I settled for trying and failing to ignore him.

Which compounded the indignity when he rescued me, just before the doors closed, from a particularly unpleasant blogger who persisted in taking a step towards me whenever I took a step back. I could smell his liquid lunch, I could see the sprinkle of stubble on the back of his jaw where he’d missed with the razor; I could feel his hand hovering inches away from my leg, as if it were just waiting for permission from the rest of him to grab me. James had smoothly put himself between the two of us, which given how close the man was had meant I ended up practically perched on the edge of the booth with the back of James’ suit jacket taking up almost my entire field of vision. The blogger was quietly persuaded to talk to Mark instead. James then returned to me and tugged gently on my elbow until I reluctantly consented to follow him around behind our booth, where we were almost completely hidden from the rest of the show floor.

“Sorry,” he said as an opening, looking down on me with gentle eyes. “I didn’t see what he was doing until he was almost on top of you.”

I remained silent, biting my lip, trying not to look at him, trying not to cry. I didn’t know if I was more upset by the handsy guy or by simply being in James’ presence. I’d been watching him half the afternoon, whenever I was sure he wasn’t watching me, obsessing over how just out of my reach he was. It was too much of an emotional load.

I managed to hold onto myself until James asked, for the millionth time that week, but with a renewed kindness I couldn’t bear, if I was okay. The part of me that wanted him won out and I flung myself at him, wrapping him in the tightest hug I’d ever given him. He reciprocated instantly, and we stood there in silence, holding each other.

I couldn’t have him; he would choose someone else and I would have to move on. But I could still take comfort in his presence, and I chose to do exactly that. For a little while.

I just wished I could stop myself thinking about the way he looked with Kristen, perfect and beautiful and actually female Kristen. I put myself in her place and my brain practically did backflips until I forced myself to remember that I was imagining the impossible.

God, I wanted a vacation from my body. I wanted to rip myself out of it and go spend some time in someone else, someone who could have who they wanted, be who they wanted. When we finally released each other, and James suggested I go back to the hotel a few minutes early to beat the rush, I was out of the doors and climbing into a taxi before I could talk myself out of the plan forming in my head.

If I had to be someone else for a while, then I’d be the only other person I had access to: the ordinary straight boy I’d been before all this started.

In my room, I struggled out of the dress and the bra, wiped off the makeup, stashed the boobs and the hip pads at the bottom of one of the suitcases, found a neutral-looking black top amongst the clothes Ben had provided, and pulled on the unisex jogging trousers and hoodie I’d bought the morning before. I couldn’t take off the horrible stretchy underwear unless I wanted to wear nothing at all because I hadn’t had the presence of mind to pack anything else, and all Ben had packed for me was five more pairs of the same thing. But that apart, I was ready: everything feminine stripped away, except for the hair.

I glared at the mirror in the hotel room, trying to decide if I’d hit the balance I needed: I had to make sure that if I ran into anyone I knew on the way out they’d think nothing was out of the ordinary, that I had just dressed down for the evening; but I also needed to actually look like myself, my old self, when I got far enough away, which was what the woolly hat in my pocket was for, to gather up and hide the hair extensions.

I honestly couldn’t tell any more. My face was still too smooth, and I still had the hair, which might have been throwing me off, but I couldn’t decide if the person looking back at me was a man or a woman. After Harry, I’d taken dozens of selfies with men, seen myself over and over again in their phone screens, had the contrast between my face and theirs so drummed into me that thinking of myself as looking like a woman had become almost natural in a few short (long!) hours.

I put on the woolly hat and pulled my hair into a temporary pony tail so I couldn’t see it from the front, and decided that maybe with the hair completely out of the picture the scales were tipped in favour of man, or boy, or whatever I was. Vertigo played at the edges of my consciousness; I looked away.

 _The hell with it,_ I decided. I released the hair so it fell around my shoulders once again, but I left the hat on as I stomped out of the hotel room. I just needed to get out of there.

  


  


My phone buzzed in my pocket, scaring me out of my reverie. I looked around for landmarks but didn’t see anything I recognised; I was somewhere in Birmingham, but I had no idea where. When I’d left the hotel I’d jammed all the hair under my hat, picked a direction, and zoned out.

I dug for my phone and unlocked it, discovering a text from Emily and one each from Ben and James.

Emily’s read: **Hi Alex, it got pretty hairy out there towards the end! I’m binging Netflix and not leaving my hotel room unless there’s a nuclear apocalypse, I suggest you do the same. See you tomorrow for round two!** I tapped out a quick reply to the effect that I’d gone for a walk and maybe a drink, and that I hoped she had a restful night. Her instant **:)** made me smile.

I leaned against a nearby street light and opened the other texts. They were essentially the same: where are you, we’re worried about you, etc. I replied to them both with one text: **I’ve gone for a walk. I’m fine, I just needed some space. James, I’ll see you in the morning; Ben, I’m taking the bed, you can have the sofa.** The last I’d heard on who got which room was that James was staying with Kit and Mark, and Ben was staying with me, and I wanted to reinforce that in case there was any confusion. Ben could complain about me taking the bed if he wanted but only one of us had spent the entire afternoon in heels.

I put my phone in airplane mode before either of them could reply and kept walking, enjoying the feeling of being quietly unnoticeable. I spent a few minutes getting my old voice back: clearing my throat, humming, and softly singing vowels with a hand on my chest. I wasn’t sure whether or not I could feel the chest resonance Ben had told me about, but I sounded deeper in my head. I recorded myself reciting a nonsense poem on my phone and listened to it back; I was pretty sure I sounded the way I used to. I hadn’t particularly been in the habit of recording myself before, so it was hard to tell.

It wasn’t far until the anonymous street terminated in a bar, one of those basement bars that looks like it’s undermining the much more respectable establishments squatting on top of it. The chalk board next to the entrance advertised ‘Spectrum Night’, which seemed like it meant music from the 1980s, judging by what I could hear. Still, there was probably alcohol inside, and because it was fairly early for a Friday night the queue to get in was almost nonexistent. I decided I wasn’t likely to stumble upon a better option, and got in line.

I had to show the bouncer my ID to get in — a perennial Alex problem — and he did the usual double take. I sighed, lamenting once again my inability to grow a proper beard and thus actually look my age, and wearily held out my hand so he could give my driving licence back.

“Have a good night… sir,” he said. Sarky bastard. How would he like it if he was two months off his twentieth birthday but still looked like he was bunking off school?

  


  


It occurred to me as I was waiting to be served that all I’d eaten that day was a cereal bar from the box Kit had passed around, so when the woman behind the bar asked my order I stuck with a light beer. I wasn’t planning on getting drunk, and it’d be easy to overshoot with so little in my stomach. She handed over the bottle and I found a table as far from the speakers as I could.

God, it was nice not being looked at. I unzipped my hoodie a little and sat back in my chair, enjoying the anonymity and sipping from my bottle. Sure, I was a little out of place in my tracksuit bottoms, like I’d gone out drinking straight from a run, but for some reason I didn’t feel bad that literally everyone else in the bar was dressed more garishly than I was.

I found myself swaying gently to the music. It was something by Madonna, but not one of the ones I knew well, so I was saved the embarrassment of half-consciously mouthing the lyrics. I stretched out my legs and wiggled my toes inside the trainers — no heels! room for my toes to actually move! — and drained my bottle.

I was on the verge of closing my eyes, I was so relaxed, when someone put another bottle down on the table in front of me. I looked up and saw a dark-haired, light-skinned woman smiling down at me.

“Mind if I sit down?” she said. “I brought another beer as payment.”

“Sure,” I said, returning her smile and taking the beer. I took a swig as she sat down opposite me.

“I’m Vicky,” she said in what sounded like a Manchester accent.

I shook her outstretched hand. “Alex. Just visiting town.”

She grinned. “Hey, same.” She took a long drink from her own beer and propped her head up on her other hand. “So why are you here tonight?” she said. “In this bar, all alone?”

“Oh my God,” I said. “I had the longest day and I needed to get away from everyone I spent it with. So I started walking away from the hotel and ended up… here.”

She laughed. “That sounds familiar. I spent the entire afternoon travelling down here with my boss, who is a huge arsehole, so first chance I got I escaped, looked online for places that seemed okay, and came here.” She looked around the place. “But it’s kind of empty, and I’m bored, and you looked bored too, so…” She was right; the bar wasn’t exactly rammed. It wasn’t much past 7pm, though.

“I hadn’t even noticed there weren’t many people here,” I admitted. “I’m only half awake. I feel like I’m jet-lagged, but I only came up from London.”

She smiled.

I felt like I ought to make a move on her, if I really was out tonight to be the old Alex, the straight Alex, but my experience in actually starting things with women was more or less nil, and I didn’t want to risk making an arse of myself and ruining her night. So I smiled back, and drank some more of my beer.

We moved on to small talk. She was a photographer — which dispelled my nagging worry that she was in town for the expo — originally from Manchester but down from Newcastle for the next week or so. I obfuscated my own story a little, specifying that I was from London but fudging over exactly why I was in town. I told her I was being dragged around by my boss, too, and needed a break from him.

Vicky leaned closer to me as we talked, but I found myself leaning back in my chair again. I don’t know why. Something about our conversation was making me uncomfortable, but I couldn’t put my finger on exactly what. I considered that maybe it was just that I’d grown so used to pushing men away over the course of the day that I wasn’t prepared for a casual conversation with a woman, but chatting with Emily and Maria hadn’t felt strange at all. It had felt normal; this felt anything but.

The thought gave me a stab of vertigo. I dismissed it with a shake of my head; Vicky frowned.

“Are you okay?” she asked, pausing her account of a photoshoot back home in Newcastle that had gone horribly wrong.

I smiled. “I’m fine,” I said, “but I’m sorry, Vicky; I’m just really tired and I’m getting a little loopy. I think I should probably go back to my hotel room.”

“Sorry,” she said, “I’m boring you.”

“No!” I insisted. “Absolutely not. I just think that what I need more than anything else is to sleep for like a million years. And probably what you need is someone who won’t fall on their face mid-conversation.”

I went to zip up my hoodie and she pulled out her phone. “You want to exchange emails?” she asked.

“Sure.” She was nice, and fun to talk to, if I could just get over myself. She gave me her email address; I had to turn airplane mode off to send her a quick message, and I winced when the voicemail icon lit up in the notification tray. “I bet a tenner that’s my boss,” I said, showing her the notification. “Wish me luck.”

“Good luck!” she replied, sounding genuine. We shared one last smile and wished each other a good night. I went outside to wait for my Uber and listen to my voicemail; she stayed at the bar, presumably to look for a guy who wasn’t as much of a mess as me.

  


  


I puzzled over the encounter all the way back to the hotel, but no matter how much I thought about it I couldn’t identify why talking with Vicky had felt so strange. Comparing it to earlier times women had approached me, back when I was a supposed adult man (as opposed to whatever I was now), I wasn’t able to come up with a common thread.

The Uber driver left me alone with my thoughts, obviously sensing that I was struggling with the mysteries on the universe in her back seat; I gave her five stars.

As soon as the car pulled away I whipped off my woolly hat and headed back to my room, taking the stairs to reduce the chance of running into anyone I knew in the elevators. Back in familiar territory I was extremely uncomfortable at the idea of being seen in such a half-and-half state, and when I got back to my room I found myself almost automatically fishing the bra and the boobs out of the suitcase and putting them on. I just felt safer that way.

I didn’t put the bum pads back on, though. I’m not a masochist.

I dug another top out of the luggage — off-white, short-sleeved, and more obviously feminine than the one I’d worn out — and was struggling into it when a knock at my door kicked my adrenaline into high gear.

“Just a second!” I yelled out, retroactively pleased I’d slipped back into the higher register without issue.

I examined myself in the mirror as fast as I could. No makeup, but no facial hair either — I _had_ to get some of that goop Ben had used on me for myself; the idea of never having to shave again was a glorious one. My hair looked… messy, like it had spent hours under a hat, but I didn’t want to brush it out as I still wasn’t confident I wouldn’t fuck up the extensions, so I found a clip and put it up, teasing a few locks out to frame my face.

I stood back, to check out my figure, which was unexciting without the bum pads on, but probably passed. I didn’t have the tits glued on but I didn’t think they were in any danger of falling out as long as I didn’t do any handstands.

“It’s James!” James yelled through the door, just before I opened it.

“I’m coming!” I shouted, doubling back. I rooted in my bag, found some lip gloss and quickly gave myself a coat. Just because I knew it couldn’t happen between us didn’t mean I couldn’t look nice.

One last quick look at myself: I’d have to do.

James, it turned out when I opened the door, was dressed almost as casually as I was. He’d swapped his suit for a teal sweater and some of those comfortable-looking trousers that I thought might have been called chinos (I have never been, like I said, a fashionista; after a few days’ pummelling from Ben I was probably more up-to-speed on women’s fashions than men’s). It didn’t matter: he still looked amazing. I stepped aside to let him through, beaming up at him like an idiot.

And I mean _up_ : without heels on, he was like a mountain next to me.

“Did you get my message?” he said, watching me carefully as I closed the door.

I nodded. I don’t know what I’d expected, but his voicemail had actually been pretty light: he’d wished me a fun night out, reminded me to stay safe and to call him if I needed any help, and suggested I get a lot of sleep to prepare for chaos come the morning. I winced as I remembered that Saturday was 10:30 to 6pm on the show floor; a full day spent being pawed over didn’t appeal.

“So?” he continued, sitting down on the edge of the bed and kicking off his shoes. Fantastic; now the height difference in his favour was reduced by a whole half-centimetre. “ _Did_ you have a good night?”

“I had a short night,” I said, sitting down next to him. I would have sat on the sofa but it would have put us a weird distance apart and I, for one, didn’t mind being close to him. I was just glad I’d popped the boobs back in before he’d knocked; I didn’t want him to see me as a guy again. Not yet. I only hoped I didn’t need the full makeup job to fully tip the scales in the proper direction, because if I had to pop to the bathroom for fifteen minutes I’d probably have to explain myself to him after, and I wasn’t sure I could. “Went for a walk. Went to a bar. Met a girl.”

“And how did _that_ go?” he asked. I couldn’t detect anything but honest curiosity in his voice.

I shrugged. “It was… awkward? She was nice and everything. She approached me, bought me a drink, and we talked. But it felt…” I frowned, searching through my memory. “Unnatural. Not the situation; _I_ felt unnatural, _me_. Artificial. Like I was faking it.” Just thinking about it was making my gut churn. “I made my excuses and left.”

“Maybe you’re not cut out for the lesbian lifestyle,” James joked. I hit him. Not hard, just a tap on the arm, to let him know I was maybe more upset than I looked. “Sorry,” he added.

“I wasn’t there like, you know, like _that_ ,” I said, struggling with the words. “I kind of… took it all off. I went out as, uh, the _old_ me.”

“ _Oh,_ ” James said. A lot of emphasis for a single word.

“Yeah.” I was ashamed of it. I don’t know why. I couldn’t look at him. I leaned against him instead, covering the last inch or so between our bodies and resting my head on his shoulder. He responded by putting an arm around me.

“I’m surprised,” he said slowly, “you went to the trouble of putting it all back on again after.”

“All what?” I said. “Oh. Yeah, I put the boobs back on when I got back here in case anyone came to my door. I’m supposed to be a girl here, remember?”

“No…” he said quietly. I looked up at him, and he seemed puzzled. He was looking at our reflections in the mirror on the wall. “I mean, all the makeup and stuff.”

I frowned. “I didn’t. I mean, when I heard it was you I put some lip gloss on, but—” I shut myself up as soon as I heard what my idiot mouth had said, hoping James hadn’t noticed.

“You’re not wearing anything except lip gloss?” he said, looking down at me.

“Nope,” I said, still looking up at him, confused as to why he thought I was.

He smiled. “Which you put on _after_ you knew it was me at the door,” he confirmed.

Shit. Rumbled. “I have to look nice for the boss,” I said, trying to make a joke out of it.

He laughed, but didn’t stop intently looking at me. “You do, you know,” he said quietly. “Look nice.”

I blushed. Why hadn’t Vicky done this to me? Why hadn’t Emily or Maria or Kristen? Why was my sexuality being so fucking inconvenient all of a sudden?

I think it was obvious on my face that I’d thought about Kristen, because James asked, “What is it?”

“Oh, um,” I said, looking away and stalling for time. “I just wondered why you’re alone in the hotel tonight. Or alone with me. I thought you might be out with Kristen.”

“Kristen?” he said, surprised. “Oh, she asked, but I’m…” he trailed off, then rallied, “I’m not here to meet women. Except in a professional capacity.”

I blinked, feeling stupid. “You were talking to her…” I muttered, only half-conscious of what I was saying. “I thought you were interested.”

He was silent for a little while, until I looked back up at him, at which point he made sure we were looking in each other’s eyes and said, carefully, “No.”

I swallowed, light-headed. I swayed a little on the bed, and had to put a hand out to steady myself.

“You okay?” James said.

“Yeah,” I replied, “I just haven’t eaten anything today. I think it just hit my brain.”

A sudden manic grin lit James’ face. “We can solve that,” he said. “Room service!”

  


  


He charged it to the company. Very decadent.

We sat nearish but not right next to each other on the bed, him cross-legged, me with mine tucked underneath me, and a spread of food in front of us. I’d put down a towel, just in case. We hadn’t ordered anything too heavy, so it was mostly sandwiches, but James hadn’t been able to resist ordering a single serving of chocolate cheesecake.

I ate happily.

“So,” James said, mouth full of sandwich like some kind of disgusting child, “what _was_ it like being out as a guy again, after all this time?”

I poked him. “I have nineteen years’ experience of being a guy, you know,” I said. “I’ve only been doing _this_ for a few days. But,” I added, remembering, “it did feel kind of weird.”

He grinned. “As weird as that first evening in the restaurant did?”

“Weirder.” I paused to think, and he let me. “In the restaurant, I was with you, you know? I know you and I trust you — even though I probably shouldn’t.” His grin widened. He was unrepentant. “But with Vicky—”

“Her name was Vicky?”

“Yeah. Didn’t I say? With you, it was like I had training wheels on, so even though it was new and scary it could only go _so_ wrong. Despite your complete freak-out when we first got there.”

“Oh, yeah,” James said. “Sorry about that.”

“With Vicky it was like I was on my big-girl’s bike for the first time and I’d just been pushed down a hill. When I thought she might be coming onto me I felt _completely_ out of control, like we were headed towards something I didn’t want.”

“You think she was coming on to you?”

I shrugged. “She bought me a drink, unprompted. I’m not _great_ at spotting the signs, but I’m pretty sure that’s a big one.”

He was quiet for a minute, thinking. I took the opportunity to demolish another sandwich.

“How did you…” He looked awkward. “How did you go back? To, like, ‘guy mode’.”

“Big hoodie. Big hat. Changed the voice.”

He was squinting at me, like he was trying to imagine it. It made my skin crawl.

“Stop that!” I said, and almost threw my half-finished sandwich at him.

“Sorry. Just trying to imagine it. I was wondering…”

“What?” I prompted, when he didn’t finish.

“…If Vicky’s a lesbian.”

Well _that_ gave my brain a kick.

“What do you mean?” I said slowly. I started connecting the dots in my head, though. I hadn’t been sure I had chest resonance back when I did a quick voice practice in the street, so I’d just lowered my pitch a bit; I _could_ have just sounded like a woman with a deeper voice. I’d shoved all my hair under a hat, sure, but as I’d finally acknowledged to myself, I had to have a fairly feminine face to pull all this modelling stuff off in the first place, and without facial hair to tip the balance in the other direction…

And the bouncer had made a thing of calling me ‘sir’ _after_ seeing my licence.

“Mother _fucker,_ ” I said.

James was grinning at me again. I really did throw my sandwich this time.

  


  


I saw the funny side eventually. I’d gone out to be a man for the first time in days, and fucked it up completely. A part of me wondered why I wasn’t more bothered about it, but mostly I was just embarrassed. I couldn’t stop seeing myself walking over to the table in that bar, in jogging clothes and a woolly hat; my imagination kept inserting a try-hard swagger I’d never knowingly attempted in real life, and it made me feel like an idiot.

“Don’t worry about it,” James said. “We can rediscover your manhood when all this is over. Go out to a straight bar and you can pull. I’ll be your wingman.”

The idea didn’t appeal. I shrugged. “I was never any good at pulling, anyway,” I said. “The old me’s batting average isn’t much higher than the new me’s.”

James smiled, but looked thoughtful. “You keep saying ‘the old me’,” he said. “Not, like, ‘the real me’ or something.”

I suppose I did. “It’s just the way I’ve been thinking about it lately. It’s easier to stay in character if I don’t think about going back afterwards too much. Whenever I do I get kind of… it’s like vertigo?”

“Maybe…” James started.

I raised my eyebrows at him when he just sat there, looking inward, but he shook his head.

“Want to split the cheesecake?” he said.

“Sure,” I said, grateful for the subject change. I wasn’t the biggest fan of talking to James about that kind of stuff.

He split the cheesecake into two halves with the fork, and looked expectantly at me. I spread my arms out, to say there was only one fork and I wasn’t going to eat with my hands. He smiled, sliced off a bite, and held out the fork to me.

I wasn’t going to let a cue like that go unappreciated. I leaned forward and ate the cheesecake right off the fork. I kept eye contact the whole time, clenching my stomach to keep myself from laughing.

He smiled, ate a piece himself, and offered me another one. We alternated until the cheesecake was all gone. I’d love to say that it was delicious, but honestly, I have no idea what it tasted like.

  


  


“Where’s Ben?” I asked. “I thought he was staying here tonight.”

We were lying on top of the bedsheets, looking up at the ceiling. I’d taken my hair out of its clip and shook it out, hoping the frizz had calmed down a little, but I wasn’t all that bothered if it hadn’t; I was too full and content.

“He found another room for the night,” James said.

“He paid for one?”

James laughed. “God, no, Alex. He met someone.”

“Oh.” I giggled. “Good for him.”

“Speaking of rooms,” James said. “I should go join Kit and Mark so I don’t wake them up stumbling in after midnight.”

I blinked sleepily. “Midnight? What time is it?”

James pointed at the alarm clock on the bedside table. The time was literally right next to my head; it was 11:52pm. I felt, as usual, a bit stupid. I put it down to intense tiredness this time.

“You don’t need to go,” I said.

Silence from my left for a few seconds. “Are you sure?” James said, sounding serious.

I yawned, one of those huge ones that makes your toes stretch. “Yeah,” I said when I was done. I was having trouble keeping my eyes open. “Just don’t molest me or anything while I’m all vulnerable.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it.”

I must have drifted off for a few minutes, because when I came back to consciousness James had taken off his sweater to reveal — damn — a white t-shirt underneath, and was wandering aimlessly around the room while he brushed his teeth.

“Oh shit,” I muttered. I hadn’t done mine. He reached out an arm and helped me up, and I staggered into the bathroom.

By the time I got done I was even sleepier, and decided against trying to change into pyjamas, both because I’d have to get naked in front of James and because I wasn’t convinced I could actually change clothes without falling over. So I just kicked off my tracksuit bottoms, left them in a heap on the floor and climbed laboriously back into bed.

James was hovering in the middle of the room.

“Shall I take the sofa, then?” he said.

 _Fuck it._ “You’ll be cold,” I said, and patted the pillow next to mine. “Just remember what I said about not molesting me and we won’t have any trouble.”

He took off his trousers and got in the other side of the bed without any further hesitation. I was glad: I was starting seriously to fall asleep and all this conversation was getting tricky. I rolled over to face the wall, arranged my arms under the pillow, and let my consciousness drift away.

“Alex,” James said, bringing me back after what could have been a few seconds or a few hours. I liked the way my name sounded on his lips.

“Mmm…” I said.

“You know,” he said, “maybe the reason you don’t like thinking about going back… is that you don’t want to go back.”

“Mmm…” I said. I couldn’t concentrate on what he was saying. I just wanted to make agreeable noises so he’d be quiet and let me sleep.

“You said you were having fun. Could it be more than that?”

“Mmm…” I said.

“You think maybe a part of you wants to stay this way?”

I rolled over to face him. He was still talking, and even though I wasn’t able to pick out individual words it was enough to keep me awake.

“Ssshhh,” I said. “Go to sleep…”

“Goodnight, Alex.”

The last thing I remembered was James smiling at me.


	8. Chapter 8

I woke to a tray of coffee and what turned out to be Marmite toast being laid gently on the bed next to me. I carefully unglued my eyelids and looked up: James, already up and dressed — although, looking more closely, he was wearing his clothes from the previous night, minus the sweater, so he didn’t win all that many points — was handing out breakfasts like a benevolent toast god.

I pushed myself up the headboard with my elbows, being careful not to rock the tray, until I managed a loose approximation of sitting up, and smiled blearily at him. I was pleased to note that my tits, which I had forgotten to take out before falling asleep, had stayed in their bra and hadn’t, for example, migrated upwards and attached themselves to my head like earmuffs. One of them was a little out of position, though, so as subtly as I could I nudged it with the inside of my upper arm until it fell back into position. How much more convenient it would be to grow my own, I reflected.

“What time is it?” I asked. I winced as I heard my voice. My throat was so dry I sounded like I’d been gargling thumb tacks — although I was still in head voice, miraculously; I was beginning to wonder if I’d have to literally relearn how to speak if I ever wanted to go back — and decided to remedy the situation with coffee. I hooked my fingers around the mug and inspected the contents: plain black, exactly as I preferred; the perfect caffeine delivery system. I slurped noisily at it.

“Seven thirty,” James said, retrieving his own coffee and drinking deeply. “So you’re in no rush to get ready. Ben will be here in about an hour.”

“Thanks for the coffee,” I said, when I came up for air.

“No problem,” he said. “I’ve had two cups already.”

I frowned at him. “How long have you been awake?”

“About an hour.”

I took another deep draught from my mug and mock-glared at him over the rim. “And you didn’t wake me?”

“You’re cute when you’re sleeping,” he said, piercing my heart with a few thousand arrows. “I couldn’t bring myself to wake you until it was absolutely necessary. Besides,” he added, oblivious to my stricken status, “I had some notes to type up for my meetings today. God, Alex, I have so _many_.” He pressed a hand against his chest to emphasise the enormity of the sacrifice involved in having to actually do work. “I suppose I have only myself to blame; this is all business I arranged yesterday. I should have slacked off, like you.”

“If you _really_ want to feel hard done-by,” I said sweetly, having somewhat recovered, “you could go to those meetings in a dress.” 

I groped around on the bedside table until I found my phone. James had raised the spectre of work, which meant I had to check my emails. I unlocked my phone and discovered I had one from one of James’ exes, which made my heart race until I actually read it. She hadn’t left him because he was abusive, she said, or even unpleasant; he was just far too absorbed with work and consequently deeply boring to be around. Plus he constantly cancelled dates because he was busy. Sounded like the reason _my_ last girlfriend left, except with me there was also always an undercurrent of bedroom ineptitude.

_Still, I’m cute when I’m sleeping, am I?_

“Oh, hey,” I said, scrolling to the next email, “Harry’s asking us for some official quotes.”

“Harry?” James said, perching on the end of the bed and sounding strangely neutral. “Who’s that?”

“You know, the kid from Raleigh’s Journal,” I replied, smiling at the memory. He’d been kind of adorable.

“Oh, the one you were friendly with.”

“Friendly _to_ ,” I corrected. “He was just so nervous. Lots of praise for me in this email,” I added, unable to resist prodding at James a little, reminding him that I was still a _good_ frontline employee, even when hampered by a dress that restricted movement down to the knees. “Although he spells my name with a y. I’m not sure why.”

We thought for a second, and then we both said, “Half-Life,” at the same time.

“That’s kind of flattering,” I said, “but I’m way too pale to be Alyx.”

“ _I’m_ not,” James said.

“Yes, but _you’re_ the wrong sex!” I said, laughing.

He frowned, mock-insulted, and posed so I could see him in profile. “You don’t think I could pull off Alyx Vance?”

I squinted at him, pretending to consider it. “No, I don’t think so,” I said. “Your hair’s too short.”

I finished my coffee and started on the toast, shuffling around on the bed a little more until my back was finally vertical and my knees were level with my shoulders. “Ouch!” I muttered. My junk had taken the opportunity to remind me I hadn’t taken the stupid stretchy knickers off before I went to bed, and I’d therefore spent the entire night with my testicles locked in their little one-car garages. Probably the end of any chance I had to have kids.

“You okay?” James asked, suddenly nothing but concern.

“Just a little twinge in my back,” I lied. “Heels all day, you know? It’ll be fine. If I ever have to wear heels again after this weekend I’ll start taking yoga classes.”

“I would count it as a business expense,” James said graciously.

“Oh, what,” I said, instantly suspicious, “because you want to get me in heels every time we have something to sell?”

He smirked at me. “I wouldn’t say no. They make your legs look _so_ good.”

He was lucky I’d finished my toast or he would have ended up with Marmite in his eye.

  


  


After spending far too long taking up space in my bathroom, James left for Kit and Mark’s room to fetch fresh clothes. Which still left me a half-hour or so to get ready for Ben. I judged my hair as still not requiring a wash — a relief, because I needed to properly look up how to care for hair extensions and I didn’t have that kind of time — so all I had to do was get undressed.

I wasn’t looking forward to it. Removing the top, the bra and the boobs was fine, obviously, but I hadn’t so much as touched the tucking underwear since the last time I’d had a piss, which had been an entire night’s sleep ago. I pre-winced before I started pulling them down, which turned out to be a good move because it was like I’d just stabbed myself in the crotch with a carving knife.

“Fffffffuck!” I yelled. It was beginning to look like putting the horrible knickers on in the first place was one of the stupider things I’d ever done. I felt like I’d been flattened with a hammer, which meant that washing myself down there was going to be even more unpleasant than usual; I’d never been especially fond of interacting with my genitals, so adding searing pain to the experience was unlikely to improve it. I was tempted to put on a fresh pair of the tucking underwear and ram it all right back up there to teach my junk a lesson, but for the first time in days I actually succeeded at a wisdom roll and decided I’d just wear my jogging trousers with no underpants on until the literal last minute.

I stomped off for a shower, walking like a cowboy.

  


  


Ben was waiting for me when I left the bathroom. I jumped half a mile in the air when I saw him, but fortunately I was wearing a robe so he didn’t get flashed. I just gave him an annoyed look instead, which was in no way diminished in its ferocity by the high-pitched yelp I’d let out moments before, and fell onto the bed.

I don’t know why Ben had a key but James didn’t. Maybe James was just more polite? No, that was probably the most outlandish thought I’d had all week, which considering its competition was saying something.

“Running late, aren’t you?” Ben said.

I didn’t have the energy to respond verbally because I was busy dying in a startled heap on the bed, so I just gave him the finger.

“Rude,” Ben commented, and started making noises consistent with unpacking torture devices from one of the suitcases. I couldn’t know for sure — I was still lying on the bed, staring at the ceiling, waiting for my heart to calm down — but it seemed like the sort of thing he would do. “Hey,” he said, “why’s James’ sweater on the sofa?”

“He stayed over last night,” I said, exactly three seconds before I realised why that was a stupid thing to say.

I sat up just in time to witness the expression on Ben’s face change from glee to stern disapproval. “And you made him sleep on the sofa,” he said. “Shame on you.”

“No,” I corrected him, “he slept in… my… bed…”

Engage brain _before_ opening mouth, Alex.

“It wasn’t like that!” I said quickly. “He came over after I got back, we ate room service, and by the time we were done it was too late to kick him out. We _didn’t_ do anything.”

“Pity.”

I was going to round on him, but he looked genuine.

“Yeah,” I agreed. “But what can I do about _that?_ ”

I think I looked sad because Ben stopped setting up his work area and came over to give me a hug, which turned into him leading me gently over to the cushions he’d put down so he could get me ready.

I wondered, as Ben sprayed my hair and painted my face, if my memory of James holding me during the night was from a dream, or if it had actually happened.

  


  


I exchanged greetings with Kit and Mark, who were finishing laying out all the stuff they’d had to pack up from our booth the day before, waved to Kristen and Maria, and accepted a friendly nudge from Emily, who waved a bag of jelly babies at me. I took one.

“Have a handful,” she said. “Stops you from getting a dry throat from talking, but doesn’t make you have to pee.”

I took three more.

Now that I was back on the show floor I was a lot more relaxed about the prospect of another day at the expo. Perhaps it was because I’d fallen further into my role — as my possible (probable?) failure to appear believably male the previous night indicated — and perhaps it was because I’d actually got some half-decent sleep. I trembled a little as I remembered exactly who I’d spent the night with, and gave myself permission to think for a few seconds about how James had looked in just his (tight) t-shirt and boxers; about how he’d smiled at me as I fell asleep.

On cue, James appeared from the staff door nearest our booth, talking with a woman I recognised as being from one of the larger companies, the ones that had spent Friday circling small outfits like ours looking for buy (or buy-out) opportunities. He saw me looking and smiled at me. I smiled back. He shook hands with the woman, walked over, and got me in a shoulder hug. I leaned in, pressing my head against him. He was warm, and pleasingly firm. My compliments to his gym membership.

“Hi, Alex,” he said, looking down at me. I liked wearing heels around him because I didn’t have to look up as far. _And_ he’d said they made my legs look good.

“Hi, James,” I said breathily. I was absolutely aware of how I was coming across, but I didn’t care any more. If I _had_ to be honest, and I think I’d used up all my credits when it came to lying to myself, I was enjoying playing this part.

“You look nice,” he said. I definitely did not preen.

“Thanks!” I said. “Better than I did first thing this morning, huh?” I said.

“About the same,” he replied, smirking. I stuck out my tongue at him and pirouetted out from under his arm. I was getting good in these heels. He spread his arms, pretending to look disappointed, and I winked at him.

“So,” Emily whispered, amused, “you gave him a break, then?”

“A very small break,” I whispered back, feeling a little giddy. I held up my thumb and forefinger, a centimetre apart, to indicate the exact size of the break I’d given him. She laughed. I glanced back over at James, and he returned my wink.

“Five minutes!” someone yelled above the general hubbub, and I cleared my head. Software demonstrations _now_ , indulgences _later_.

  


  


Saturday on the show floor turned out to be less work than Friday had been. There were far more people in the hall but they were mostly members of the public, who flocked only to the larger stands. We still had a fair amount of foot traffic from bloggers and publications that hadn’t been able to make it on Friday and were interested in the esoterica the smaller booths were showing off, but even then they were mostly of the can-I-have-a-selfie-with-you variety, so I didn’t have to spend much time explaining our software solutions in detail.

By midday, James had vanished to some meeting or other, and Emily had gone on her break, so I was dealing with the small queue of selfie-hungry attendees on my own. I was getting pretty good at it, too: beckon them in, stand next to them and wait for them to arrange themselves, smile, wait for the click, and encourage them to move on immediately after; next! Mark, who was pretty tall, was covering for his boredom by playing at bouncer, standing intimidatingly close by with his arms folded. It was quite sweet of him, really. Occasionally I’d catch his eye and he’d grin at me.

I’d just dispatched the last one when I heard the clip-clop of approaching heels and sighed with relief. As accustomed as I was getting to herding horny men, it’d be nice to talk to a woman for a change; I was getting tired of nervous hover-hands. I’d almost started my welcome spiel when the face recognition circuits in my brain ticked over and I went cold.

It was Sophie, James’ cousin. The one he’d originally asked to do hair and makeup for the models, before all the _me_ stuff happened and he enlisted Ben. What was she _doing_ here?

Fuck. She _knew_ me. The old me the boy me the real me who-the-fuck- _ever_ ; she knew me.

“Oh my God,” she said as she approached, “you have _no_ idea how long it took me to find the booth. This place is _huge_ and this map—” she brandished a pamphlet of the sort you could pick up at the front doors, “—is fudging _useless!_ I swear I’ve been confronted with more useless gadgets and gizmos than I ever want to see in a million years. Hi!” She extended a hand to me. I took it, trying not to cringe. She’d visited the office several times, had even gone out to dinner with James and me, but didn’t seem to have recognised me so far. “I’m James’ cousin. Is he about? Mr McCain, I mean.”

Praying my head voice would be sufficiently different from my old voice, I said, “Mr McCain is in a meeting at the moment. He shouldn’t be long.” I would have been amused that I’d dropped straight into my customer service voice if I hadn’t been so tense.

“Oh, that’s fine,” Sophie said. She pulled one of the stools out from under the booth and perched on it. “I was originally going to be doing your makeup, you know,” she added, squinting at me, “until he decided he’d rather have his mate from uni do it. Seems like he did an okay job, though.”

 _‘An okay job’?_ I was offended on Ben’s behalf.

“Ben?” I said, before my survival instincts could properly kick in and tell me to just smile and nod. “Yeah, he did us both.”

“Well, I decided I wanted a holiday anyway, so I thought I’d come see my little cousin. See what he’s doing with all that money I keep hearing his dad complain about.”

I hadn’t had much exposure to James and Sophie’s family apart from James’ father, but I’d got the impression James’ decision to try his hand at making a name for himself in technology — albeit with a big pile of daddy’s cash as a starter fund — was mildly controversial in a family that tended more towards silly hats at Ascot.

I paid attention to my own internal monologue this time, and just smiled and nodded.

“So, what’s it like?” she said. “Booth babe-ing?”

I coughed delicately. “It’s ‘trade show model’, not ‘booth babe’.” For some reason I’d taken a strong dislike to the term. “And it’s mostly smiling for photographs, answering extremely simple questions, and showing off the demo hardware.” I shrugged. “Today it’s almost entirely smiling for photos.”

Sophie was still squinting at me. “You know, this is the _craziest_ thing,” she said, “but I really feel like we’ve met before.”

I was running through possible answers when a hand that didn’t belong to either of us appeared in front of me, clutching a bag of jelly babies. Emily was apparently back from her break. I don’t know why I didn’t hear her walk up; probably I was just so focused on looking unrecognisable for Sophie.

“Hey, Alex,” Emily said, “I got you your own bag.”

“ _Alex?_ ” Sophie exclaimed. I closed my eyes. “Alex fudging _Brewer?_ I _knew_ it!”

“Excuse us,” I said to Emily, and took Sophie by the arm. She didn’t resist; I think she was using all her energy charging up, Dragonball-style, to yell something incriminating at top volume. “Sophie, would you come with me?” I delivered the last three words through clenched teeth.

“Yes, of course,” she said in a daze.

I practically frog-marched her out through the staff door and into the same women’s toilets I’d had my minor breakdown in the day before. I checked the stalls to make sure they were all empty and then risked a look at her, preparing for an explosion of anger, or disgust, or _something_.

She was giggling. “Al— Alex, this is the _ladies loos!_ ”

“Yes?” I said. “Sort of goes with everything else.” I gestured down at the clothes I was wearing.

“God— God— _why?_ ”

I leaned against a sink, suddenly feeling very tired. “It’s a long story. The short version is, the models we booked fell sick, and we couldn’t get anyone else at such short notice.”

She barked a laugh. “So you just… _decided_ you’d replace them? Just like that? And what about the other one? Is _she_ a—?”

“No!” I said quickly. The last thing anyone wanted was Sophie trotting back out there and trying to look up Emily’s skirt. Emily especially. “It’s just me. And _I_ didn’t decide; James suggested it.”

It was Sophie’s turn to have to prop herself up. She was laughing so hard I thought she’d collapse, so I stepped over and offered her an arm; she took it, but waved me off when she recovered.

“God,” she said. “Let me look at you.”

I didn’t know what else I could do, so I took a step back and presented myself for her approval with a nervous smile.

“Ben does good work,” she said critically. “Of course, he wasn’t exactly working with Chris Hemsworth to begin with.”

I didn’t feel I could argue with that. Chris Hemsworth had, in addition to his spectacular body, a strong jaw and nose — _How did I not notice I was into men before?_ an idle thought interjected — whereas the best you could say about my face was that it was a nicely inoffensive oval shape; at least, that was before it turned out that all I needed to do was strip all the hair off it to pass as a woman.

“True,” I admitted.

“You said it was James’ idea?” she asked. I nodded. “Hah! You know he showed me that photo? On Facebook? From a school play or something? He kept talking about it after; I bet he was just waiting for his chance to have some fun with you.”

“He’s been kind,” I protested. “He hasn’t made fun of me.” She raised an eyebrow. “Okay, a little.”

“So,” she said, leaning forward, continuing her inspection, “what’s it like? Life on the other side of the fence?”

I shrugged. “It’s the same but the shoes are less comfortable.”

“You’re not… _bothered_ by this?”

“No? It’s just clothes.” Oh, I was bothered, but not particularly by the clothes. “Like, it was weird at first, but I got used to it pretty quickly.” I decided not to mention the whole bisexual thing, 

“In-credible,” she breathed. “How do you do the voice?”

“Ben taught me. It’s like singing, but you talk instead. It’s not that hard.” I was glossing over the arduous practice it’d taken to get there in the first place, and how difficult it had been for me to recapture it the first morning after, but something in me wanted to show off a bit.

Sophie looked… the only word for it is _enraptured._ “Alex, this is bloody brilliant!” she said, a little too loud. “I mean, you’re—”

I shushed her, and to her credit she allowed herself to be shushed. “Look,” I said, “you have to be careful. No-one can know about this. It’s just James and Ben and me who do, and we’ve all been working very hard to make sure it stays that way. Emily, the other model, she doesn’t know, she thinks I’m normally just kind of butch, which is why I had to take a while getting used to the heels. And neither do the engineers, Kit and Mark, or anyone else here.”

“Kit?”

“Short for Ankit. Please? Tell me you won’t tell anyone? Or fuck up pronouns around me or something.”

She gave me a look that said I was being an idiot. I was used to that look from James; it appeared to be genetic. “This isn’t my first rodeo. Let’s be clear, though: who do Emily and the engineers and everyone else _think_ you are?”

“I don’t know about Kit and Mark,” I said, “but Emily thinks I’m basically a soft-butch geek girl who never dressed femme until this week. I told Emily I was into girls — it came up, okay?” I added, when Sophie looked like she wanted to comment.

“W _hy_ did it come up?”

“She thought James was looking at me,” I said. “I told her there was no chance, because we were old friends, he’s my boss, and I wasn’t into guys anyway.”

“ _Really?_ ” Sophie was delighted. “James has been looking at you?”

“No, no no no,” I said quickly. “She _thought_ he was. She saw things that weren’t there.”

“I see. Anything else?”

I wanted to bash my head against the bathroom wall, partly to get some relief from the idiot things I kept saying, and partly to see if any genuinely useful information that Sophie really needed to know fell out of it, but I suspected I might look crazy if I did.

“I don’t think so.”

“Well then, come _on_ , girl,” and she beckoned at me as she started to leave the bathroom, “we need to get you back to your _stage!_ ”

I had a horrible feeling this was all going to end with her calling me ‘fierce’.

  


  


I let her lead me back to the booth. As we exited the staff door onto the expo floor I spotted Emily talking to James; I dreaded to think what she was telling him. She caught my eye and raised her eyebrows, and because I was just behind Sophie and thus invisible to her I mouthed, “James’ cousin,” and waggled my finger next to my head in the universal sign for ‘crazy’.

“James!” Sophie exclaimed, as we approached the booth. “How dare you try and keep me away from your expo! It’s such a…” She looked around the local area, which was practically empty; Kristen and Maria looked like they were leafing through the bumpf scattered around their booth, so they were probably bored as hell. “Such an exciting event,” she finished, not quite sticking the ‘sincere’ landing.

“Hi, Soph,” James said, sounding tired. “What are you doing here?”

She finished dragging me over and we arranged ourselves around the booth. I propped myself up against one of the sturdier bits; I was feeling unaccountably light-headed. I was fairly certain Sophie planned to milk the situation for all the awkwardness she could manage. I’d have to play along or she might dob me in just for the drama.

“I wanted to visit my cousin!” she said innocently. “And you weren’t at your booth, but then I ran into Alex here!” James closed his eyes; I felt a silent camaraderie with him. “It took me a long time to recognise her; what _did_ you do to her?”

“He made me put on a dress, the bastard,” I said, trying to get into the spirit.

“Did it hurt?” Sophie asked with mock concern. “When you were turfed out of your Birkenstocks and dungarees and forced into normal clothes for once?” I got the feeling Sophie didn’t meet a lot of lesbians, if those were the stereotypes she reached for; she sounded like a stand-up comedian from forty years ago.

“You call this ‘normal’?” I tweaked the fabric on the skirt. “Save me, Sophie, he’s dressed me up like an idiot!”

I have no idea what Emily thought of this little display. She was looking at us like we were deranged. Fortunately, we’d given James enough time to reboot his brain.

“Soph, don’t encourage her to be mean to me,” he said. “She doesn’t need the help.”

“No, but I appreciate it,” I said. James flashed me a quick apologetic look, so I grabbed his forearm and squeezed, smiling to let him know I was okay. He rolled his eyes; I put on my best ‘Oh God Sophie’ expression.

“Sophie,” James said, taking hold of my forearm and squeezing it in return, then letting it go, “why don’t we go get some lunch and leave Alex and Emily alone so they can do their job?”

“You don’t want to come with us, Alex?” Sophie asked.

“I can’t,” I said, “I’ve got to mind the stall with Emily.”

“Then lead on, James!” Sophie announced. “Emily, it was just wonderful to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Emily managed.

James smiled at the both of us and then practically dragged his cousin away. The last thing I heard her say was, “So, how _did_ you get Alex to dress up?”

I closed my eyes and put my full weight on the sturdy bit of the booth again. I let the nervous energy drain from my body.

“That was an experience,” Emily said.

I gestured from Emily towards the empty space where Sophie had stood, and back again. “Emily; Sophie, James’ cousin. Sophie; Emily. She’s a bit much, I know. Comes from being rich, I think; they don’t have the same shut-the-fuck-up filters the rest of us do. Everything’s a game, everyone’s just maahvellous fun.”

“Birkenstocks?” Emily asked, grinning.

“I wore sandals to work _one time…_ ” I griped.

“Well—” Emily started.

“ _Alex?_ ” said a voice.

I was getting tired of people saying my name as if they’d just found out I was an alien. I almost didn’t want to look and see who it was. When I did, Vicky from the bar was staring right at me, lowering an expensive camera, an unreadable look on her face.

I realised James’ theory that Vicky had thought I was a woman when she bought me a drink was about to be tested, and slumped just a little more against the booth.

“Alex, are you okay?” Emily asked. I nodded, hoping that I was. Poor Emily; she signed up for an ordinary trade show job, and now she was stuck babysitting a crossdressing idiot who was set to break the world record for number of nervous breakdowns in a weekend.

“Alex?” Vicky said, walking up to me so she could talk quietly and still be heard. “I’m sorry; I didn’t mean to startle you.”

I tried to regain my professional composure. “It’s fine,” I said. “It’s just that I’m easily startled right now. It’s not your fault.”

“Do you want to talk for a few minutes?”

I shook my head. “I really can’t,” I said. There was a large-ish group of people hanging around in the middle of the show floor, looking like they might head in our direction once they’d gotten their bearings. “I’m not leaving Emily to cover this place alone again, especially since Sophie’s still around.” I also didn’t want Sophie collaring Emily on her own. I wasn’t convinced she could hit the correct pronouns every time if she wanted to talk about me, and she would _definitely_ want to talk about me.

“Sophie?”

“ _Long_ story.”

Vicky frowned. “Why don’t you tell me later,” she said. “Which hotel are you staying at?”

I named it.

“Same,” Vicky said. “Meet you in the bar there, seven o’clock? Just for an hour or so; I still have work stuff this evening.”

I smiled. “Sounds good,” I said, trying to put some feeling into it.

“Good.” She nodded decisively. “Um, would you mind?” She waved a hand towards the both of us and raised her camera. “I need to get some pictures of the stand…?”

Emily and I obliged with our product-demonstration poses. Vicky snapped a couple of shots, got a close-up of the demo device as I held it for her, nodded and smiled at me, and headed off with the man who was presumably her boss for the next booth.

“I am _never_ modelling again,” I said to Emily, as soon as they were out of earshot.

“You say that now; I said exactly the same thing after my first time,” Emily said. “Although my first time was mostly _just_ men being unpleasant. I managed to avoid dramatic repercussions until some guy I dated at uni saw me on a booth babe website.”

“Oh shit. That doesn’t sound good.”

“It didn’t go well,” she said, grinning toothily, “for _him._ ”

I was about to ask for more details when the Mark tapped me on the shoulder — it was a good thing I’d seen him approach out of the corner of my eye, because I was that jumpy I might have lamped him otherwise and badly hurt my hand — and wordlessly handed me his phone. It was James.

“Alex?” he said. The grumpy noise I made into the handset was obviously sufficient to confirm my identity, because he continued, “Sophie has agreed to leave you be for the rest of the weekend—” I sighed in relief, “— _if_ you agree to have dinner with us tonight.”

“Do I have to?” I whined.

“I think, overall, you probably _want_ to,” he said. 

“Fine,” I said. “I’m having drinks with Vicky at seven, so make it eight-ish at the hotel restaurant.”

“Vicky…” James said, obviously having trouble remembering.

“From last night?” I prompted. “Before you came over to my room? At the bar?”

“Oh,” James exclaimed, as Emily’s eyebrows tented, “ _that_ Vicky. Did she call you?”

“She _appeared_ ,” I said flatly. “Here. She’s a photographer, and apparently we — Emily and me — are among her subjects.”

He laughed, and if he were physically present I would have kicked him the ankle with my pointy shoe, but he wasn’t so I just had to use my imagination and put my trust once again in my psychic powers. “So, uh, was I right about her?”

I sighed. “I honestly have no idea.”

“Oh,” James said, sobering up. “That could be awkward.”

“Yes,” I said. “That could be _extremely_ awkward.”

“Take your phone,” he ordered, all trace of amusement gone, “and have my number ready to call so it’s the first thing on the screen when you unlock it. I’ll be at the bar with my phone out in front of me. Not close enough to overhear you, so you can talk about— about whatever you might need to talk about in private, but close enough that if you dial my phone I can be over at your table by the second ring.”

He’d spoken with such urgency it left me momentarily speechless. “Um,” I said, “don’t you think that’s going a little far?”

“Remember what I said about your safety?” he said. “I won’t risk it. If she already knows or finds out you were a guy and threatens to hurt you—”

“She won’t,” I said. “I’m sure.”

“I’m not,” he said, and hung up.

“Jesus,” I commented, staring at Mark’s phone. I waved it at him, dumbly, and he came to collect it.

“Okay,” Emily said, “I’m way too curious about this to mind my own business.”

I explained, keeping it brief and altering some of the details to suggest that I wasn’t sure whether or not Vicky had been coming on to me, not that I didn’t know which gender she’d read me as. Which was ridiculous, but hey; my life.

“And James wants to be at the bar to— protect you?” Emily said, puzzled. “ _Or_ because he’s jealous and he wants to see what women who come on to you look like. You know,” she added, “I think he has a point: it took her about five seconds to ask you for drinks tonight. She’s definitely coming on to you.”

“Only for an hour, though.”

“Still.”

I made an unhappy noise. At this point I wanted a friend much more than I wanted a hookup. And I really didn’t want to be thinking about this when we had photos to smile for.

“So what did you do to that guy?” I asked, hoping to force a subject change. “The one who saw you on a booth babe website?”

Emily looked a little put out, but she consented to tell the story: she screengrabbed all his messages and sent them to his mother, who had some choice things to say to him about respecting women. After that, whenever we had free time between attendees, we began swapping dating horror stories; I didn’t have to be careful about genders when it was my turn because Emily already thought I was a lesbian, or a bi woman who preferred other women, so my personal disasters went more or less unedited.

Overall, I was sufficiently diverted, both by Emily and by my bag of jelly babies, that I was spared too much time to myself to worry about whether or not Vicky _knew_ , and what her intentions were.

  


  


I blessed Ben down to his cotton socks for spending so much of James’ money at Harvey Nichols. I had the contents of both suitcases spread out on the bed, looking for something nice; I wanted to look like I knew what I was doing, especially if she was going to expose me. I couldn’t put my finger on the impulse and I didn’t have time to question it, so I just went with it, eventually picking out a matching floral print silk top and midi skirt, paired with a small white shoulder bag and an absolutely gorgeous pair of white leather sandals that, despite the one-and-a-half inch heel, felt like they were kissing my feet.

I’d already taken off the slightly garish show floor makeup and I’d done my best to replicate one of Ben’s more subtle efforts. I was still terrible at eyeliner, though, so I mostly didn’t bother with it except in the outer corner. I vowed to practice when we got back to London.

In the end, I was quite pleased with the result. The clothes fit me perfectly, obviously — well, they fit me with the padding around my chest, hips and bum provided by Ben’s little accessories — and were beautifully made; and all the good parts of my hair were extensions put in by expensive hairdressers. It would have been a waste of James’ money if I _hadn’t_ looked amazing, which I was mostly reassured by, but which also left a slightly sour taste in my mouth. I decided that when this was over I wanted to try a little shopping for myself, and see if I still looked good when someone of ordinary resources (me) was the most I had in my corner.

I retrieved my phone from where I’d left it on the bed that morning, checked the time, and opened James’ contact page before I locked it and threw it in my bag. One last look in the mirror — _Alex, you’re starting to get vain_ — and it was time to go.

I wondered if Vicky, assuming her intentions tonight were good, would send me a copy of the photos she’d taken at the expo. As a memento.

  


  


Vicky was waiting for me outside the hotel bar, and smiled when she saw me. I couldn’t detect a hint of vindictiveness in her expression, and I scolded myself for doubting her intentions. She was dressed casually: blue jeans, white trainers, and a white blouse with a print pattern of what looked like little parrots on it. Her dark hair was up and she was wearing, if I was any judge, very little makeup.

Instantly I felt overdressed, but she didn’t comment. I let her take me by the arm and lead me to one of the more private corners of the bar, where we were instantly accosted by a waiter.

“Just an orange juice, please,” Vicky said to the waiter. I asked for a Diet Coke, and when we were alone again she explained, “I shouldn’t drink; I have a strategy meeting tonight and then tomorrow I have to be on the other side of the city, bright and early.”

“Same,” I said. “I’m meeting my boss for dinner after, and I’d rather be awake for it.”

I was inwardly pleased. She wasn’t likely to think of this as a date — even a quick one — if she was ordering orange juice and clarifying her excuses upfront. And there was no _way_ she knew I was crossdressing, unless she’d absorbed the idea so calmly she hadn’t thought it worth even mentioning. I relaxed, letting the tension out of my shoulders and allowing the cushioned back of the chair to take my weight.

The waiter smoothly glided past our table, dropping off our drinks and returning to the bar. I spotted James, fiddling with his phone, ignoring his beer, positioned so he could see us out of the corner of his eye. True to his word, he was too far away to hear our conversation.

Unless he’d installed a listening app on my phone…

“Work never ends, does it?” Vicky said.

“This is… more of a social obligation,” I said, wincing. “With his cousin.”

Vicky choked on her orange juice. “Your boss isn’t trying to hook you up, is he?”

“Not with his cousin,” I said carefully. “Definitely not.” I couldn’t help smiling at the thought.

“Speaking of work,” she said, “you’re a booth babe!” She looked incredibly pleased, like she’d just turned over a rock and found a winning scratchcard underneath.

“Trade show model,” I said. “And when you said you’re a photographer, that means…”

“Technical photography, today,” she said, grinning. “Shooting the ‘exciting’ new devices for a tech website — and the booth babes, obviously; sorry, _trade show models_ — and tomorrow is more of the same but offsite. Monday I get an actual day off, and then Tuesday we’re shooting for a local fashion designer. We’re contractors: if you can’t afford a full-time staff photographer, you hire us.”

“Sounds more interesting than modelling,” I said. “Although that’s not what I _really_ do.”

“Modelling’s just the day job that pays the rent?”

“Actually, the day job is what I spend most of my time on, but two of the models we had booked for the expo got sick at the last minute…” I ran through my spiel, inserting the usual lies. I wondered how many more people I’d tell the My Fair Lady version of this week to by the time it was over, and laughed, having just realised why Ben had found it funny I’d chosen to recite ‘the rain in Spain’ while I was training my voice.

“I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about it last night,” I said when I was done.

“We didn’t exactly talk for hours,” she said.

“I know, but I thought about it and deliberately didn’t tell you.” I frowned. “I made the decision to lie about it. Like I said, I’m a computer nerd and general company gopher; I came into _this_ with some… preconceptions about models I had to drop. I guess I was worried about other people holding the same views.”

“Then you’re forgiven,” Vicky said, smiling. “But you don’t owe that kind of information to a random hookup. Which is,” she added, raising her half-finished glass to her face so she could look at me over the rim, “what I was attempting last night, by the way. Looking back, I’m not sure if you were clear on that.”

I giggled. “Yeah, I picked up on it.”

“You can stop doing the perky straight girl voice if you want, since it’s just us here,” she said, dropping the coy look and smirking.

I’d almost forgotten I’d been attempting a man’s voice — hilariously, an unconvincing one — when we’d met. “I would,” I said, “but if I drop it now I’ll worry about getting it back in time for dinner with my boss.”

“I get it,” Vicky said. “It’s hard for me to get my perky employee-of-the-month shtick back sometimes, too.” She nudged me with her free hand. “We should form a support group; we can’t be the _only_ queer women here this weekend.”

She was smiling at me, looking so open and kind, and I suddenly felt horrible for lying to her about myself. I hated all this bullshit, I just wanted to _talk_ to people, to be around them without either the fear of discovery or the terrible awkwardness of attempting to be a guy and suddenly having no idea how to pull it off.

I’m an open book, like I said; Vicky picked up on my reaction. “Oh, God,” she said quickly. “Sorry, if you’re not queer or gay or anything, it’s just…”

“It’s not that,” I said, defeated. “I— I don’t know what I am.”

“Is that why last night you looked like you might want to kiss me, and then you very suddenly ran away?”

“Sort of?” I drank from my Coke as I thought about what to say next. “I used to think I was attracted to women, and only women. Never gave it a second thought; it was just normal. Normal to _me_ ,” I added.

“You were _never_ interested in guys?” Vicky asked. “Not even when you were young — well, younger? The whole compulsory heterosexuality thing?”

I added that to my list of things to Google when I had the time. “Never,” I said. “Until just a few days ago. My boss.”

“Oh.”

“Yep,” I said. “Last night, when I met you, I was still telling myself it wasn’t real, that I wasn’t into him. I went out, to try to feel normal again. But talking to you— I just felt like a fraud. Sorry.” She smiled and shook her head, to indicate an apology wasn’t necessary. “So like I said, he asked me to fill in for the models who couldn’t come, and his friend from uni dressed me up like I’ve never been dressed up before, to see if I could, you know, walk in heels, not flash people while wearing a skirt, that kind of thing.”

“Did he teach you how to talk proper?” Vicky said, putting on a mockney accent. “Like in My Fair Lady?”

Why did everyone else get psychic powers and not me?

“So we went out to dinner,” I said, ignoring her grin, “me and James — my boss. Got a bit drunk, and he kissed me, and…”

I looked down at the table. The whole day my hindbrain had been slowly processing everything I’d felt when I was around James, everything I wanted to do to him and have done to me, and had come to some conclusions that I hadn’t really dealt with yet.

No time like the present.

“And I’ve never felt anything like it before,” I finished. “Never with any girl; with anyone. So now I’m thinking, it’s not that I’m bisexual; it’s that I’m— I’m straight.” I almost said it the wrong way round. Thank God my internal copy-editor was awake. “But then as soon as I think _that_ , I start to worry that _none_ of it is real, that it’s just the whole, um, modelling thing. Dressing like this. Acting like this. That I’ve just got swept up in it.” I gave her an apologetic smile. “And _that’s_ the mess you bought a beer for last night. I feel like I should pay you back.”

“Don’t,” she said, and patted me on the arm. “And I get it, I do. The first girl I was interested in, when I didn’t know I liked girls at all, was a bit of a hurdle for me. Took me a long time to realise what was going on in my head. And it turned out to be kind of a disastrous relationship! _But_ she helped me come to terms with my bisexuality and now it’s just a part of who I am. Of course,” she added after a moment, “she transitioned after that and now he’s a guy, so _maybe_ if he’d been the only ‘girl’ I couldn’t have kept fooling myself that I was straight, but then I met Faiza and we dated for four years, so.”

I was stuck on a word. “Transitioned?” I asked.

“Yeah, he’s a trans man. And,” she added, gesturing with her nearly-empty glass, “he didn’t work _his_ shit out until he was twenty-two. How old are you, Alex?”

I blushed. “Nineteen.”

“ _Nineteen?_ ” Vicky looked scandalised. “God, it’s a good thing we didn’t do anything, fuck. Look, do you know how many people have themselves completely figured out at _nineteen?_ Like three smug bastards in the whole country, per year. I hate them.”

“He really didn’t figure himself out until he was twenty-two?” I asked urgently. “He didn’t _know_ he was trans?”

“No?” she said, puzzled. “He had some stuff happen, said it ‘cracked his egg’, which as far as I know is a term trans people use for when they come out to themselves.”

“He just… worked it out one day?” I swallowed against the tinnitus.

“He said, up to that point, he’d been unhappy and uncomfortable with being a woman, and sort of low-key hated his body, but he didn’t put it together until something happened.” She shrugged. “I don’t know the details, I just saw it on Facebook. We had a bad breakup, like I said.”

“I thought they always knew…” I muttered.

Vicky touched my arm again. I withdrew it, unable to think clearly but in that moment not wanting to be touched.

“Are you okay?” she asked.

Fuck. Cards on the table time. If I had to talk about this with someone, better someone who’d be going back to Newcastle in a week, the literal other end of the country from me.

“I think I might be trans,” I whispered, and I fell into a black hole for a while.

  


  


“Alex?”

I hadn’t given it serious thought before. Because everyone knew transgender people knew from birth, right? Everyone _knew_ that! So I couldn’t be trans, and therefore I had to be something else.

But now…

Even the possibility, properly considered, was daunting.

“Alex?” Vicky said again.

I looked up from the table. “Sorry,” I said. “Kind of went somewhere for a second there.”

“Yeah,” Vicky said, still looking worried. “I thought you’d blown a fuse.”

“Blew a couple, I think.”

“You said you think you might be trans?” she asked. I nodded. “Are you thinking of transitioning?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, it’s been sort of bubbling under all week, but I just thought… God, I’m an idiot.” A world-class, award-winning, record-setting idiot. “I don’t know how trans people feel. I don’t know if it’s _real_.”

“Hey,” Vicky said, touching my arm. I didn’t move it away this time. “I don’t know loads about this stuff, but I do know that it’s not a race. And I guess now I also know that a high proportion of the lesbians I approach aren’t lesbians at all, but trans men who haven’t worked it out yet.” She smiled at me.

“It’s, uh, not like that,” I said. Was I doing this? Was I really doing this? “If I’m trans — _if_ — it’s not in… that direction.”

“What do you mean?”

“Alex,” I said, and took a deep breath before I continued, “is short for Alexander. I’m a boy. Guy. _Man._ ” I practically growled the last word. It had never felt so poisoned on my lips.

“Oh,” Vicky said. “Ohhh.”

“Yeah,” I said. “I always thought I was an ordinary straight guy, and then my boss gets me in a dress and five minutes later I’m blushing down to my _knees_ when he kisses me. And,” I added, once again preparing to face down a difficult realisation, “I’m more comfortable like _this_ than I ever was before. It’s like someone finally turned on the light and I can see properly for the first time. But I’ve been fighting it. Like last night.”

“Last night?”

“I put the hair under a hat — these are extensions, by the way — and tried to get my old voice back and go out as— as a guy.” I couldn’t look at her for this part. “I told myself I was just too involved in the role I was playing, and all I needed was to be a straight _man_ again to get my head back on.”

I could tell Vicky was trying not to laugh. “You mean, last night you were trying to be a man?”

I smiled. “Yeah, I know. And the daft thing is, that’s basically how I always used to look. Just with scrappy stubble and a different voice. And not usually a hat.”

She squinted at me. “I can’t imagine it.”

“Good,” I said with satisfaction. “Wait; you’re not angry?”

“Angry?”

“I mean, you came onto a… guy.”

She rolled her eyes and held up a finger. “Okay, first of all, I told you I’m bi, right? I like guys, girls, nonbinary people; I really don’t care as long as they’re pretty.” She incremented the finger count to two. “And second of all, it doesn’t seem like you’re _actually_ a guy. Inside.”

I shook my head. “I really don’t know.”

“Alex, I think guys, actual guys, they _know_ that. Someone asks them, ‘Are you a guy?’ and they’re confident about their answer.”

“Maybe.” She was making sense and I was stubbornly resisting absorbing it. It was all too much. “I never thought about it before this week. It just— I just _was_.”

She smiled. “You think most straight guys would be comfortable doing what you’ve done this week? Wearing that? Being a _booth babe?_ ”

“It’s just a job,” I mumbled.

“Oh, no you don’t, young lady,” she slapped me lightly on the arm. I looked back up at her, stunned. “I am _literally_ watching you trying to think of reasons why you can’t be trans, why you can’t be a woman. I know because I did the exact same thing when I realised I liked women. I lost a year of my life to that shit and fucked myself up good and proper. I am going to give you—” she reached into her bag, retrieved her purse, took out a business card and started to write on the back of it, “—the address of a website I found when I heard my ex transitioned and I wanted to know what was going through his head. And you’re going to go there, _tonight_ , and read what the people there say. And maybe talk to them about your own story. Okay?”

I was helpless in the face of an attractive person giving me instructions. It was how I ended up in a dress in the first place. I put the card in my bag; it looked like she’d written a subreddit URL on it.

“Okay,” I said, smiling.

Vicky squeezed my arm. “This is normal, you know,” she said. “Lots of people transition. You’re not alone.” She glanced at her phone. “I have to go, but before I do I want you to promise me you’re going to go to that website.”

“I will,” I said. “I promise.” Like I said, I have no willpower in the face of beauty. It was probably helpful in this case.

She got up, and pulled on my arm until I got up, too. She hugged me, and I hugged her back.

“You be careful, okay?” she said. I nodded. She pulled away from me for a second, and then kissed me on the lips, gently and briefly. “Enjoy your dinner.”

I smiled. “Enjoy your strategy meeting,” I said.

“That,” she said, “is absolutely guaranteed not to happen.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> http://www.reddit.com/r/goldenretrievers


	9. Chapter 9

Vicky reminded me one more time to be careful, and left for her strategy meeting. I watched her go, admiring the way she filled out her jeans but realising as I did so that I wasn’t imagining what it would be like to take her clothes off, I was instead wondering how I would look in jeans like hers instead of the very expensive but rather shapeless Harvey Nicks ones Ben’s personal shopper had picked out. I’d need the bum pads, of course; Vicky’s butt was a hundred times nicer than mine was without my ‘helpers’.

I was _envious_ of her! Perhaps a little attracted to her, sure, but mostly I wanted what she _had_ , who she was; I didn’t want _her_ except as a friend. Was this why no woman had ever excited me the way James did? Had I always been envious of women, and called it desire? No wonder I’d been crap in bed.

 _Another blindfold comes off,_ I thought. How many more before I was done? The transgender question was the obvious next step…

Lost in thought, I didn’t notice James had walked up until he stepped into my line of sight. I came back to reality: I was still standing right where I had been been, leaning against the table we’d been sitting at, hugging my belly, staring blankly at the double doors Vicky had left through.

“I presume it went okay,” James said teasingly, “if you already miss her so much.”

“Hmm?” I said, still not entirely in the present moment. I replayed what he said, and detected a touch of sourness in his voice despite his pleasant tone. “Oh, no, it’s not that.”

“You kissed!” he said.

“You watched!” I accused him. “You _said_ you wouldn’t.”

“What I said was,” he replied, sitting down and depositing the two glasses he was carrying on the table, “I wouldn’t _listen_.”

“If you _had_ listened,” I said, returning to my seat and pulling one of the glasses toward me, “and I’m glad you didn’t, but if you had you’d know it was the furthest thing from a romantic kiss.” I sniffed the glass; rum and Coke, like he used to drink at uni. Perhaps he was feeling nostalgic. “She was just being nice. Reassuring me. In case you haven’t noticed, I’m a bit of a mess.”

“ _You’re_ not a mess,” he said enigmatically, and sipped his rum and Coke. Before I could interrogate him, he added, “Reassuring you about what?”

He was using his neutral voice, which meant he was pressing down hard on his emotions. I usually heard it when he was talking to soon-to-be- or just-recently-become-ex-girlfriends on the phone.

“She brought something up that was… difficult for me to face,” I said carefully.

“What was it?” he pressed.

Did I really want to get into this with him? Right now? In the hotel bar? No. “Just some stuff,” I said. “Stuff I need a chance to properly think about before I can talk about it.”

“But you talked about it with her?” he said, frowning.

“Like I said, she brought it up.” Was he upset that I wasn’t sharing?

“Hmm,” he said. Yeah, he was upset.

His hand was resting on the table next to his glass. I took it and squeezed it until he looked at me. I tried to ignore his flinch when I’d touched him. “I promise I’ll tell you,” I said when his eyes finally met mine, “if you give me a little time to think about it?” I tried a reassuring smile.

I swear his pupils dilated. “Um,” he said, his face losing all the little signs that he was controlling his expression. “You can’t tell me what it’s about, even a little?”

“Patience,” I said.

He was still looking at me kind of strange, like he didn’t know _what_ to think, so I had some rum and Coke and let him.

“James?” I prompted, after he’d been quiet for perhaps a minute. “Are you okay?”

He shook himself. “Yes,” he said. “Sorry. Sophie rattled me earlier, but I was so busy with work I didn’t have a chance to think about what she said. You’re just kind of… bringing it all up again.”

James went quiet again, so I had another sip and propped my chin up on my wrist to look at him properly. I was rather tired, and the bit of my brain that was usually pretty good at decoding James when he was being mysterious apparently needed new batteries.

“What did she say?” I asked, when it looked like he was going to spend another full minute staring at me without saying anything. It was either that or give him that kick I’d fantasised about earlier, but my white sandals weren’t anything like as tough as my work shoes, and I liked them more and thus didn’t want to break them against his stubborn calves.

“Hm?” he said. I very nearly kicked him anyway; he could buy me a new pair if it came to it. “Oh, it’s really nothing I want to talk about right now,” he added, sounding more confident and James-like than he had the whole time he’d been at my table.

Fair’s fair, I supposed. “Let’s agree,” I said, “to tell each other what’s bothering us _after_ we’ve got done thinking about it. Later sometime, or tomorrow. If we’re _both_ stewing on something, then we both get some peace and quiet after dinner to work on it. Okay?”

He shook himself, visibly returning to the James I knew and— knew. “Oh, shit,” he said, “for a moment I forgot about dinner with Sophie.”

“Lucky you,” I said sourly. “It’s been on my mind for _hours_. But let’s agree, yes? To put our stuff, whatever it is, on the back burner until we’ve survived dinner? And talk about it with each other only when we’re ready?”

I was still holding his hand; he covered mine with his free hand, sandwiching it in his warmth. “Okay,” he said, smiling. “By the way,” he added, “you look fucking _amazing._ ”

“Thanks,” I said, returning his smile and willing myself not to blush. The heat I felt in my cheeks suggested I had, as usual, failed. “I kind of… wanted to look nice tonight.” I’d chosen this: picked the outfit, done my own makeup, and been pleased with the results. No sense in even trying to deny it any more.

“Do I— do you have Ben to thank for that?”

“Nope,” I said, grinning. “Well, his personal shopper bought the clothes, obviously. But I picked them out, did my face, and so on.” I angled my chin to give him a good view of my face. “I think I’ve got pretty good at it.”

He nodded. “ _Really_ good.”

We sat in silence for a moment. I don’t know about James, but I was enjoying a bit of a break from disasters and huge questions about my identity. It was nice just to be in his company again, and I was glad to see he seemed to have gotten over whatever reticence had made him flinch when I held his hand. Spending time with James wasn’t how it used to be; we seemed both closer than ever and further away, more apt to touch each other and yet more careful about what we said. I didn’t mind, though.

It was worth it, it was all worth it, just to be able to look in his eyes and know, at last, unequivocally, what I wanted.

His phone alarm chimed. I sighed; it would have been nice for the moment to have lasted a little longer.

“Dinner time,” James said, letting go of my hand and standing up. As an apparent afterthought he drained his glass.

I left mine half-finished on the table. My body was already flirting with exhaustion, and I didn’t want to add drunkenness to the shit it would have to keep me upright through. As it was, when I got out of my seat I must have stepped oddly on my heel because I wobbled a little.

Before I’d even worked out what was going on, James had a steadying arm around my waist. I let him take my weight for a moment so I could relocate my centre of gravity without any more risk to my verticality. And because I liked the way it felt when he had his arm around me.

“Forgot I was wearing these for a second,” I explained, waggling a foot to show off the sandals.

“I thought you were used to heels by now,” James teased, yet to let go of me.

“I’m used to them, for sure,” I said. “But I’m forgetful.”

“Would you like a little help getting to the restaurant?”

Honestly? Yes. I was more tired than I’d realised. “It couldn’t hurt,” I said.

He released me, but before I could be disappointed he presented his arm to me, like a real gentleman. I linked arms with him and let him lead me out of the bar.

  


  


Sophie’s reaction, when she saw us walking arm-in-arm into the restaurant, was contained entirely within her eyebrows. But between them they did a _lot_ of work. I wondered if James had persuaded her to keep her voice down in polite company, but then I remembered: the rich are trained to be decorous in restaurants; it was only in the wider world, among the plebs, that they really let rip.

She stood up as we approached, walking towards us and opening her arms. James let me go and Sophie and I embraced and exchanged cheek kisses. She stepped back from me in the same way Vicky had, and looked me over.

“You look fantastic, Alex!” she said.

“You too,” I replied. She really did. Slightly overdressed, perhaps, for a mid-priced hotel restaurant, but I had no real room to talk there. Sophie wore a midi dress, similar to the one I’d worn that first night but in black and probably worth ten times as much, and paired it with a simple but stunning pair of black sandals with a criss-cross pattern up her calves and a spike heel of sufficient height it made me wince.

I still thought James was the better-looking of the two, though, even discounting my bias. He was wearing another suit from the Very Expensive collection by Georgio Expensivo (I’m a fashion ingénue but I learn fast). Thankfully for the sake for my equilibrium it wasn’t the charcoal star-of-my-wet-dreams suit; this one was navy blue with matching tie over a white shirt. I felt a familiar stab of lust when I looked at him in tailored clothing — accompanied by a stab of pain from my much-abused dick, just letting me know in case I’d forgotten that it was jammed up against my body and not having the greatest time — but I was also a little sorry for him that his options were limited, in such an environment, to various flavours of fitted suit, when I got to be wrapped in silk.

Sophie had gotten us a spot at the edge of the dining area: three soft-backed chairs around a circular table, so we could all be equidistant from each other. She gestured towards the chair that backed against the wall and, walking perilously unaided for the first time in an hour or so, I made it to my seat without falling down or even visibly wobbling. I appreciated the wall behind me — enough people had scared the shit out of me over the last few days by poking or tapping on me from behind that I was beginning to want a portable one to take everywhere with me — but it did mean I was effectively boxed in by McCains on both sides.

Well, Sophie was a Lincoln-McCain. Same difference.

“You really are _adorable_ , Alex,” Sophie gushed, when we were all in our places and she could make a proper start on embarrassing the shit out of us without disturbing our fellow diners. “How long did all that take you?”

“Give her a break, Soph,” James said.

“I _am_ giving _her_ a break!” she insisted, with an emphasis on the pronoun so slight I’m not sure someone who wasn’t listening out for it would have detected it. “I’m being nice!” She directed her attention back to me. “Who picked out that _gorgeous_ outfit for you, Alex?”

“I did,” I said, “all by myself.”

“And those curves,” she said, “are they real?” She _had_ to know there was no way they could be.

“Sophie!” James whispered. “Remember what I said?”

She sighed. “Yes?”

“What did you say to her?” I asked him.

“He said,” Sophie announced, “you were having a hard enough time of it without _me_ —” she placed an innocent hand on her chest, “—causing a fuss around you. So I should lay off. But you’re doing so _well!_ Nobody would know—”

“ _Soph,_ ” James hissed.

“—that you’d never modelled before,” she finished smoothly.

“Well, I haven’t,” I said, “and however relaxed I might appear to be I’ve running _kind_ of nervy all weekend, so a little consideration would be nice.”

“Fine,” she said, dialling down the attitude just a little. I didn’t know what had gotten into her; she was usually a bit pushy, the way she had been in the afternoon, but tonight she had an undercurrent of something I couldn’t identify. It was making me antsy. “I just think it’s a little unfair,” she continued, “that you look so _good_ , considering, you know…”

She left the dot-dot-dot hanging. I picked it up. “Considering what?” I asked sweetly. “And in what way is it ‘unfair’? What advantages do you think I have? How much did _you_ risk when you put on that nice dress this evening?”

“I just hope my cousin remembers what we talked about,” she said, turning her smile on James, who flinched like he had when I’d touched his hand. I wanted to intercept that smile, like a bodyguard jumping in front of a bullet.

“I remember,” James said hesitantly. Under the table, out of sight of Sophie, he took my hand and squeezed it. I took it to mean that she was referring to the same thing he hadn’t wanted to talk about earlier, and that I shouldn’t raise the subject with her at the table. I was about to return the gesture when he abruptly dropped my hand and directed all of his attention conspicuously at the menu.

“Are you ready to order?” asked the waiter, who had somehow managed to sneak up on me despite being in my direct line of sight. Either this place sent their waitstaff to a better class of stealth combat school than Pizza Express did or I was even less alert than I thought I was. Suddenly I really wanted to get the whole dinner over with and hide in my hotel room for a week or two. I had some serious thinking to do, and this was holding me up, increasing the likelihood that I’d pass out as soon as I got back to my room. I didn’t want to have to get through another whole day with such a heavy question hanging over my head.

“Not just yet,” James said, smoothly switching into Rich Guy Mode — he sat up straighter and I swear I heard a little beep in his head as all the Polite Bullshit circuits clicked on — and giving the waiter a professional smile. “May we have a wine for the table while we decide?” He scanned the wine list on the back of the menu and named a bottle which turned out to be worth more than my best pair of (men’s) shoes.

The waiter nodded and melted back into waitspace.

James’ shoulders sagged again. “Can you please be nice?” he said to Sophie.

“I’m just making observations!” she protested.

“Make yourself useful and observe the menu,” James said. “It’s getting late and I’m hungry.”

We all studied the menu. I assumed James and Sophie were getting more sense out of it than I was; they discussed the options with all the impression of knowing what the hell they were talking about, while I squinted at my copy and wondered what a ‘tomato concasse’ was, and what you did to cabbage and apples to make a ‘jus’. When the waiter returned bearing wine — James did the tasting routine again — I ordered the chicken, confident enough in my deduction that the ‘frites’ it came with were something I’d be reasonably happy about putting in my mouth.

My bladder sent an interrupt to my brain shortly after we ordered; it had apparently got done working on my Diet Coke and needed some attention paid to it.

“If you’ll please excuse me,” I said to the table, code-switching (badly) into Posh, the way I sometimes did around rich people, “I must use the ladies’.”

Before I’d even stood up, James was pushing back on his chair, creating some space between him and the table, inviting me through the gap. I smiled at him gratefully and manoeuvred myself past him, trying not to bash him in the face with my arse. If I denied I didn’t take at least _some_ pleasure from pressing my legs against his as I climbed over him, I’d make a liar out of myself; and when he touched his hand against my thigh to help steady me I almost passed out from the electric shock.

I was halfway to the bathroom when I saw Sophie following me. Nothing I could do about that except perhaps run screaming out of the room, and at no point over the past few days that I’d contemplated that had I actually followed through.

“I have to ask,” she said, as soon as the door to the ladies’ closed behind us, “where on _earth_ are you putting your dick?”

“ _Jesus,_ Sophie!” I said as my heart jump-started itself into full-on panic mode. I quickly checked under the cubicles, and luckily we were either alone or the women in the stalls had sensed incoming drama and lifted their feet out of view so they could listen in undisturbed. “What are you _doing?_ ”

I didn’t actually wait for her to answer because I was quite desperate for a piss and I still needed to disassemble my complicated underwear before I could relieve myself. I picked a stall and slammed its door, harder than I intended.

“What am _I_ doing?” Sophie asked, aggrieved. “What are _you_ doing?”

“What do you even mean?” I snapped. Lift up skirt, lift up bum pads, pull down knickers — _fuck, too fast, holy shit that hurt_ — and relax. _Aaaaaah_. “If you have a problem with me, please _say_ what it is and don’t keep me in any more suspense!”

I heard her enter the stall next to mine. At least she actually needed to go and hadn’t followed me to the bathroom solely to make my life worse.

“I can see you flirting with James, you know,” she said.

“Sophie, for fuck’s sake,” I sighed, “we’re _friends._ We’ve known each other for years. I’ve probably spent more time with him than anyone apart from Ben and his immediate family. We’re close, that’s all.”

“You walked in arm-in-arm!” she snapped.

“I’m tired, and he was helping me walk,” I said.

“Oh, how convenient.”

“Don’t forget, I’ve only been wearing heels a few days.”

“I saw you touching each other under the table! And earlier, at the expo! Admit it: you’re all over him. You can’t tell me there were _reasonable explanations_ for that.”

I really wanted to bite something. “You know what?” I said. “ _Fine_. You’re absolutely right: I’m into him. I always have been. You know what that makes me? A gay man.” Okay, so if I accepted Vicky’s premise that I might be a trans woman — a big _if_ , but not necessarily an outlandish one — then I was outright lying here. But Sophie didn’t seem like she was going to drop this unless I made her. “And you know what James is? He’s straight, Sophie.” I tried not to be upset about that. “He made it through university rooming with a gay man; five days with me in a dress is child’s play. I’m _not_ going to turn him gay, if that’s what you’re so bothered about.”

“Jesus, I’m not _bothered_ ,” Sophie said, less sure of herself.

“You _sound_ bothered.”

She was silent for a moment. I used the time to finish my business and clean myself so I could strap everything back up again.

“Fuck,” Sophie said, much more quietly than before. I raised an involuntary eyebrow; it wasn’t like her to swear. “I’m sorry, Alex.”

Okay, _now_ I was confused. I finished arranging myself, flushed and exited my stall. Sophie was still in hers, but either she was the stealthiest pisser in the world or she was just sitting there with her dress hitched up, doing nothing. I washed my hands while I waited for whatever was coming next.

“I’m protective,” she said, after a good long while. “Do you have any family around your age?”

“Not really,” I said. “I have a cousin who’s twelve. That’s it.”

Sophie snorted. “That’s about the age gap between James and I,” she said. “Our families are very close. I watched him grow up. Watched him grow distant from his parents. Watched him escape.”

“Escape?” I asked.

“You’ve met his father?”

“Yes,” I said. “I’m, um, not a fan.” My dad had known James’ mother for years, through the church. When she married James’ father and moved away our two families had stayed in touch, and she’d brought much of her extended family with her on her occasional visits, but it wasn’t until I’d started at McCain Applied Computing that I finally met his dad.

I heard a flush, and a moment later Sophie emerged, tear tracks on her cheeks, eye makeup messed up.

“Fuck, Sophie—” I said.

“It’s okay,” she interrupted. She concentrated on washing her hands, and then leaned heavily against the sinks. “I’m just— I’m protective of James, like I said. And he’s managed what I never did, which is to just step away from all our family _bullshit_. I built up an idealised version of his life in my head, and when I saw how you two behave around each other…”

“I’m not who you pictured for him?” I suggested. It hurt.

“It’s not even that,” Sophie said, miserable. “We talked about you at lunch, you know. I… rather confronted him, I’m afraid. Told him he was just playing with you, that you were _way_ too easygoing and receptive to all this, and he was just taking advantage.” I went cold. That sounded a little too much like what I’d said to James, back at the office, when I was angry as hell at him. “He insisted he was trying to help you through a difficult time and that’s all it was, but… Alex, he was _too_ defensive.”

“Of himself?”

“Of you,” she said shortly. “He barely spent any time at all defending himself. The way he talks about you, Alex…” She sighed. “I think he loves you.”

“Um,” I said. It was all I could manage. I started feeling dizzy again.

“But not as a man,” she said. “I would keep calling you ‘he’ — I think I was trying to drum it into his head what you are, because at this point I was starting to think you were manipulating him—”

“ _Manipulating him?_ ” I interrupted. I couldn’t help it.

She smiled weakly at me. “Look at yourself,” she said. “You’re dressed in expensive clothes _he_ bought for you, you’re prettier than most girls I know, and you’re _way_ too good at this for it to be your first time. I…” She looked away, at the floor. “I thought maybe you were after his money, or something. I’m sorry; it sounds stupid when I say it out loud.”

“To be clear,” I said, “I’m a complete rookie at… whatever this thing I’m doing is. Except for that school play, I suppose. I’m not a— a—” Words failed me.

“An _en femme fatale?_ ” she asked, grinning. If there was a joke there it was beyond me. “Never mind,” she muttered.

“What do you mean,” I asked carefully, “that he was defending me?”

“Oh. Yes. I kept calling you ‘he’ and ‘him’ and all that, and he kept correcting me. Over and over. ‘She’s a woman, show her some respect,’ that kind of thing. He got quite angry about it.”

I sighed. “That’s just—”

“Don’t say it’s for your safety,” she said sharply. “It’s not that. Well, it is, but it’s _more_ than that. It’s important to him that he thinks of you as a woman, Alex. He’s falling in love with the woman he sees. And _that_ scares me, still.”

“Because I’m not a woman?” I said bitterly.

“Aren’t you?” Sophie asked. “You’re not like any gay man _I’ve_ ever met. You’re not like any man I’ve ever met full stop. So what _are_ you?”

It was my turn to look away. “I don’t know,” I whispered. “I’d never thought about it before.” I laughed drily. “It had never come up. But now, with all this… It’s making me ask questions about myself I never even knew to ask. It’s fucking terrifying, Sophie.”

“I’m sorry, Alex,” she said. “I walked into this whole complicated situation and stuck my size sevens right in the middle of it. Making assumptions. Fuck.” She kicked the wall. “I’ve become my mother. You know why I’m twenty-nine and still single?” I shook my head. “Because my mother was a total bitch to every guy I brought home when I was younger. They didn’t make enough money, or they were ‘too rough’, or they just weren’t right for whatever reason. Like James did, I got away from my parents, but it took me a _lot_ longer, and I internalised a lot of what she said. So says my therapist.” She gave me a weak smile. “I thought I was just a danger to myself. Turns out I’m projecting all that shit onto James. But I _have_ to know,” she added, standing up straight and grabbing me gently but firmly around the upper arm, “if you’re going to hurt him.”

I looked her right in the eye. “The last thing I want is to hurt him.”

“Good,” she said, easing the pressure on my arm a little. “Look, you’ve obviously got more going on in that head of yours that I realised. I thought it was like a game to you. And then when James was really obviously infatuated…” She trailed off, shaking her head.

“You thought I was playing with him,” I finished for her. “I’m not. And I get it; you don’t want him hurt. But—” and this was the point where I had to confront the _other_ thing she’s said, “—you say he’s falling in love with the woman he sees when he looks at me?” She nodded. “Jesus,” I commented, and lost control of my knees. Sophie’s grip on my arm hardened again, and she took another step towards me, supporting my weight. I didn’t fall.

“You really didn’t know?” she asked, smiling softly.

“I didn’t,” I whispered. “I mean, I thought, maybe, but it was such a dream. I didn’t want to hope.”

“I suppose the question is,” she said, “whether the girl he sees in you is real or not.”

I closed my eyes. “She might be.”

The bathroom door opened and made us both jump. I half-expected to see James poking his head in, but it was just an older woman, who ignored us and went straight into a stall.

“Good enough for now,” Sophie said quietly, and gave me a quick embrace before letting me go. “You’ll figure things out before you let anything happen between you, yes?” I nodded. “Good girl.” She looked at herself in the mirror. “Fudge; I’m all messed up. Will you help me?”

“I mean, I’m still practicing,” I said. “But sure.”

  


  


James’ eyes practically popped out of their sockets when Sophie and I walked out of the bathroom arm-in-arm. Sophie’s idea: a cheeky reference to the way James and I had entered the restaurant.

“The key to dealing with men,” Sophie had explained as I repaired her mascara, “is to keep them off-balance. If he thinks we’ve been talking about him, he’ll feel like we’ve got him on the back foot.”

We were alone in the bathroom again at this point, having dawdled a little fixing her makeup so we could eke out a little more privacy. Sophie, having got done with her interrogation, had moved on to advice.

“We _have_ been talking about him,” I pointed out.

“Mostly about you,” she said.

“It seems a little unfair,” I said.

“No,” Sophie said sternly, holding a finger up in my face. “There’s _way_ too much power in his court right now. He’s your boss, he’s got money, he’s straight…”

“Is he really?” I asked, closing the mascara and handing it back. “If he’s into me, how can he be straight?”

“Because he sees you as a woman, Alex.” She punctuated my name by bonking me on the head with the mascara. “Whether you _are_ or not is something you need to work out, but as far as he’s concerned, you are. So you need to take a little control of the situation. _Especially_ because you need to slow things down a bit so you can get a chance to think.”

“Okay,” I said. “How?”

“I’ve seen the way he looks at you,” she said. “I bet every time you touch him he gets a semi. So, for now, _stop touching him._ Don’t take his arm, don’t hold his hand, don’t get out of your chair by sliding your arse over his crotch.”

I blushed. “He—” I started.

“I know he basically invited you to do that,” Sophie interrupted. “He’s a man; he’s controlled by his knob. Be the adult in the room and don’t take the opportunities he puts in front of you. However much you want to; and I know you want to,” she added with a grin. “Ease up on the physical contact until you get the time you need to think about—” the door to the bathroom opened again, reducing us to communicating in code, “—about what you need to think about.”

“Okay,” I said, nodding. It was good advice. I _had_ been indulging myself more or less without any idea of where I was taking things, I suppose because I didn’t believe they _could_ go any further than just flirting. “You’re really okay with… with…” I couldn’t bring myself to say it.

“I’m okay with it if it’s what he wants — if it’s what both of you want — and if it’s real. But I mean it: if you break his heart I’ll be mad at you.” She narrowed her eyes as she inspected me closely. “I don’t think you will.”

We escorted each other back to our table. Abiding by our conversation I took the non-James route to my chair. It was a sacrifice, but a necessary one. If Sophie was right, and James really was attracted to the woman he saw in me, I owed it to him and to myself to figure out if she was actually real before I acted on it.

I needed a barometer. I needed to talk to trans people.

  


  


I got through the meal on autopilot. I had far too much to think about to really taste my food. James tried to touch me a few times — casually, like with the quick hand-grasp from earlier — but I fended him off every time, smiling to let him know it wasn’t out of malice. I hoped it got through.

I escaped as quickly as politeness allowed, picked up a Red Bull from a vending machine on the way through the lobby — I’d had only one glass of wine, but in concert with the half-finished rum and Coke and my encroaching exhaustion it was enough to impede my concentration — and leaped for a closing elevator door, almost colliding with the man inside.

“Hi,” he said.

I checked him out in the mirrored elevator wall. I put him in his early forties, and thus far too old to be directing the hopeful leer he had on his face at a nineteen year-old woman.

“Hi,” I said, trying to inject as much finality into the syllable as I could.

“Which floor?” he asked, with his hand hovering over the panel so I couldn’t hit the number myself.

“Fourth,” I said. Something inside me — the same part of me that was calling me an idiot for getting into a lift without checking its contents first — made me lie. I could always hop down a flight of stairs when I got to the fourth floor.

“Ah!” he said, delighted. “Same as me.”

 _Naturally,_ I said to myself.

“My name’s Frank,” he said. “I’m here for the expo that’s in town.”

 _Naturally times fucking two._ “I’m here meeting my husband,” I said, having decided to let the part of me that thought the rest of me was a dumbass control my mouth. It could probably do a better job.

“Ah,” he said again, rather more crestfallen this time. Were men always this obvious? Or was it just the creeps? _Who hits on someone in a fucking lift?_

We rode the elevator in silence after that. I started second-guessing myself immediately, telling myself I was being rude to a perfectly normal man who was just being perfectly nice and was just — I checked — perfectly looking at my arse in the mirrored wall.

When we got to the fourth floor I stepped back to let him out first, and then hit a number on the panel as soon as I was free to.

“I forgot something,” I said. “Have a nice evening.”

The doors closed on his sad little face.

Did I really want to be a woman, I asked myself as I waited for the elevator to spit me out at the correct floor, if that’s the sort of attention I have to look forward to?

  


  


I set myself up at the hotel room’s tiny desk, the one with the lighted mirror, and arranged in front of me my work laptop, my Red Bull, Vicky’s card, and my encroaching sense of despair. I couldn’t get the encounter with the man out of my head. He’d looked at me and looked at me and _looked_ at me, in a way I’d thought I was used to after two days being on show at the expo. But in a confined space, with no-one else around, it had been _very_ different.

“Don’t lose heart,” I said to myself. “Just learn from it.”

I talk to myself when I’m rattled.

I booted the laptop, tapped in the Reddit URL Vicky had given me, and settled down to read.

  


  


Half-an-hour later and I was no closer to an answer. Sure, trans people were far more varied than I’d expected — and, yes, many of them hadn’t realised they were trans until they were my age or older, which was a big kick in the face to my theory that I couldn’t be trans because I hadn’t known all my life — but I was having difficulty applying their experiences to my own. I’d just come to the conclusion that I needed to register a throwaway account so I could talk to someone when my phone screen lit up with an email notification.

It was Vicky, forwarding the photos she’d taken of me at the expo. I opened one.

By this point I’d seen myself in mirrors, car windows, reflective walls, and the phone screens of random guys as they took selfies with me, but something about the photo was different. I was just _there_ , chatting with Emily — Vicky must have snuck some candid shots when I wasn’t looking — and I looked so perfectly at ease it made my heart ache. In a daze I thumbed through the other photos, and they were all like that: there stood a normal woman, albeit in a very silly dress, and she looked like she belonged. She looked _real_.

I remembered seeing other photos of myself, from before, and how uncomfortable they’d always made me feel. I’d always thought I was just another self-conscious nerd who didn’t like having his picture taken; I’d thought everyone who wasn’t supremely confident in their own appearance felt like that. But seeing these photos instantly recontextualised every other photo of myself I’d ever seen.

It turns out it _isn’t_ normal for your skin to crawl when you see yourself.

I had to talk to someone. I registered a fresh Reddit account and thought about what I needed to say.

  


  


**[-] donut_appreciator**  
dude that’s the most egg thing I’ve ever read in my life

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
‘Egg thing’?

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
you don’t know what an egg is?

okay so an egg is basically a trans person who doesn’t know they’re trans yet

and you’re like making this big post about how basically you’ve been living as a woman for like three whole days now and you’ve never felt as comfortable or as accepted in your life

and immediately after typing all that you’re like “help I don’t know if I’m trans”

which is the most classic egg thing ever

like with most eggs it’s like they’re looking wistfully at girls or boys or whichever and wishing they could be like that but then write it off as perfectly normal curiosity, the sort of thing everyone feels

like it’s the main feature of being an egg

in your head you turn very obviously trans experiences into “well that’s just how everyone feels”

“every man hates being a man and secretly wishes they were a girl, that’s just what it means to be man” sort of thing

but you basically transitioned three days ago and you’re happier than you’ve ever been and you’re STILL trying to make excuses

there’s a big flashing neon sign up in your face that says YES YOU ARE TRANS and there are like musicians and singers and backup dancers all on the theme of YOU ARE A GIRL and you’re looking at the whole stage show like “yeah, but what if I’m not?”

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
But I’ll be going home in less than two days and taking all this off.

What if when I do that it feels okay?

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
do you WANT to do that?

or do you feel like you SHOULD do that?

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
I have no idea. Both?

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
ok well first of all fuck “should”

if all of us did what we “should” do then I’d be a miserable girl still living with my mum and spending all my time playing video games in the dark

instead of being a happy guy living with my dad and spending all my time playing video games but with the curtains open this time

(I’m recovering from top surgery)

“should” is the word we use when what we NEED conflicts with what other people WANT from us

except from what you said it sounds like the people around you are pretty chill with the idea that you’re a girl

so the biggest obstacle here is you

and “should”

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
But that’s the thing, what if when I stop doing this I realise I was just caught up in the novelty of it all? In the way dressing and acting like this makes me feel?

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
how does it make you feel?

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
Happy, I think. But that could just be from getting out of my rut.

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
you’re making excuses

it’s a funny thing, when people treat us as who we really are, it tends to make us happy

and when WE let OURSELVES be who we really are, it tends to make us happy

bottom line:

IF there were no obstacles in your way, no-one to tell you what to do or who to be, if you could just flip a switch and be a woman forever, would you do it?

don’t think just answer

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
Yes.

**[-] donut_appreciator**  
https://urlshorti.fy/2tx34

My vision swam as I stared at the single word I’d typed. Was I really that certain? I pictured myself returning to my life as ‘old’ Alex and realised I could imagine no future for him. Sure, he’d keep working at McCain Applied Computing, he’d make some money if the company did well or he’d have to find another job if it went under, and maybe at some point one of the occasional women who took an interest in him would stick around, but it didn’t look like a _life_ ; it was a series of sketches, empty snapshots of an existence with no meaning. Alex-the-guy would work and work and eventually die.

I pictured remaining as I was, committing to it, becoming a woman for real, and saw a future. I found myself imagining day-to-day life, getting caught up in the details of how I would redecorate my nasty little apartment, where and when I would go shopping. I imagined hanging out with Ben and Sophie and Emily and, yes, I definitely imagined a relationship with James, as unlikely as that still seemed despite Sophie’s claims. I saw a life. Sure, I’d have to get treatment or whatever, but if trans people managed it… if _other_ trans people managed it, it had to be do-able.

The link took me to an offsite FAQ with the title, “So your egg cracked. What now? (UK edition)”. It laid out the paths to treatment like they were three marathon runners, from slowest to fastest. Slowest, with a timetable of at least a year before treatment could start and a warning that it could be considerably longer, was going through the NHS. In the middle, at up to six months to treatment, was a guide to how to arrange an appointment with one of a small brace of private doctors. Fastest, at a couple of weeks and with a handful of warnings attached, was just going online and buying the requisite medication from an overseas pharmacy.

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
Thanks for the link! It’s all still pretty overwhelming though.

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
well I mean you don’t have to make any decisions right away

but remember

even if right now you’re lucky enough to be able to pass with just some makeup and rubber tits, that WILL NOT LAST

unless you have a condition that makes you insensitive to testosterone, which is possible but far from guaranteed, then YOU WILL start to masculinise sooner or later

it happens to everyone

it’s probably already happening for you in little ways

I started T at 18 and I wish I’d started earlier

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
So I’m basically sitting on a ticking clock?

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
More like a ticking time bomb.

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
You think I should just buy the medication online?

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
it’s not ideal like at all

ideally you’d have someone take your bloods and work out an exact treatment regimen for you

and then you’d come back every six months for more blood tests to make sure you’re not over or under dosing

but what ACTUALLY happens for most trans people in this country on the NHS is we just get put on the same dose as everyone else and then blood tests happen later

so if you buy off the internet you’re not ACTUALLY doing anything the NHS wouldn’t do for you, you just don’t have like the official rubber stamp to get your HRT for cheap at the corner pharmacy

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
But wouldn’t it be safer to see a doctor who can diagnose me? I need to know I’m not about to make a terrible mistake, surely?

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
lol

ask any british trans person on here

the diagnostic procedure comes down to, “do you have a persistent wish to live as the opposite gender” which is what I asked you earlier but with the word persistent in it

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
Oh.

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
yeah lol

no one has a foolproof machine they can point at you that goes beep if you’re trans

like in some countries they have a thing called informed consent where you just sign a piece of paper saying I understand what I’m doing now gimme hormones

so in buying off the internet you’re just doing that really

I understand what I’m doing and here’s my credit card now gimme hormones

anyway going on HRT is diagnostic in itself

if after a couple months your mood has worsened and you feel like shit all the time and you don’t like the changes that have started in your body you can just…… stop

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357**  
You really can just stop HRT? There’s no side-effects or anything?

 **[-] donut_appreciator  
**yeah

your body will just take over hormone production and start pumping out testosterone again

depending on when you stop you might have like slightly bigger nipples but a couple of months isn’t enough time to like give you a supermodel body

 **[-] random_throwaway_484357  
**I can’t believe it didn’t occur to me I could just try them out. I’ve been thinking of this as a huge, life-changing decision.

 **[-] donut_appreciator**  
yeah it’s really just a load of little ones

imo the life-changing decision has already been made

you said yes before

you know what you want

you know what you need

now you just have to get past your doubts

  


  


I was reading the section of the website that covered the effects I could expect from HRT — softer skin, some breast growth, a fleshier butt, but no help with my voice or facial hair — when my phone chimed again. This time it was a text from James.

**Hi. Mind if I come up?**

**Sure,** I replied. And then I took a deep breath and slowly composed another message. **You can bring your overnight bag and something to sleep in if you’d like. Since you were so well-behaved last night.**

James’ reply took longer than I’d like, considering what I’d just put on the table. **Five minutes then,** he wrote, **to get my stuff together.**

I had five minutes to prepare. I closed the laptop lid so I could inspect myself in the mirror; I still had the makeup on I’d done for dinner, but that was fine. I stood up and looked in the full-length. The clothes I’d worn for dinner were gorgeous, of course, but they felt rather too formal for… for whatever was about to happen. We’d promised to tell each other what was going on inside our respective heads, and I didn’t want to be an immaculate Harvey Nichols-clad goddess for that. Even though, thanks to Sophie, I had a fair idea of what might have been bothering James, I still wanted to be approachable and maybe not flaunt my fake curves quite so much.

I dug out the not-terribly-comfortable jeans and top combo I’d worn for the journey up from London and quickly got changed. I didn’t bother with shoes or socks. But when I checked myself out in the mirror I still felt a little too dressy. It took a moment for me to identify why, and I was just wiping my lips on the back of my hand when James knocked.

On my way to the door I noticed I was practically skipping. I took a deep breath, calmed myself, and opened it.

James hadn’t changed his clothes, but he was carrying his suit jacket and tie over one arm. His shirt was unbuttoned at the top, and I had to bite my lip to stop myself focusing on the little scruff of chest hair that was visible.

He looked downcast. My heart fell out of my chest.

“What is it?” I asked urgently. I took his free hand, intending to lead him into the room, but he flinched away from me. “James?”

He hesitated, and then reached out for my hand. “Sorry,” he said.

I took his hand, and he didn’t resist this time. I closed the door behind him, led him over to the bed and sat him down. He kept looking at the floor.

“James,” I said, “what’s going on?”

He was silent.

“James?” I repeated. “Please look at me.”

When he finally met my eyes, all I saw in him was utter despair.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter took a little while. Been feeling a bit ill this week!
> 
> Outfit refs:  
> Alex at dinner: https://i.imgur.com/9uwFhKD.png  
> Sophie at dinner: https://i.imgur.com/uF42sjc.png


	10. Chapter 10

James kept looking at me for brief seconds, grimacing, and then looking away again, staring at the floor, at the door, at his own reflection in the mirror; anywhere but me. After a little while I stopped asking him questions and just sat next to him, gently rubbing his spine to show him he was welcome here, he was wanted here, and he was under no pressure to respond if he wasn’t able.

I briefly considered that he might be drunk, but while his eyes were bloodshot I guessed it was from crying and not alcohol: he had the remnants of tear tracks on his cheeks, he wasn’t physically pliable like drunk people can be, and he didn’t smell the way he usually did when he’d been drinking. It was possible he and Sophie had polished off another couple of bottles of wine between them and he was just hiding the effects, but I doubted it.

I wondered what had happened with Sophie after I left. For all that she’d softened on me after we talked in the bathroom, it didn’t change the fact that James, after an evening with her, was more of a wreck than I’d ever seen him. I couldn’t help resenting her for that.

Unless, of course, the mess in front of me was my fault.

“James,” I tried again, “please talk to me.”

Finally he spoke up. “I shouldn’t,” he said through a ravaged throat.

He’d definitely been crying. Nothing else would have made him sound like that. I reached behind me and blindly found one of the water bottles that were still scatted on the other side of the bed; I’d thrown the contents of my suitcases approximately everywhere when I was looking for something suitable to wear to dinner. He took it wordlessly and drank. I returned to stroking his back.

“Why shouldn’t you talk?” I asked as gently as I knew how.

“I’ll just make it worse,” he muttered.

“In what way?” I asked. When he didn’t answer, I decided to risk setting off the dynamite. “Was it something Sophie said?”

He closed his eyes. “It was something I did.”

“Tell me, please.”

He finished the water before he said anything. He must have been parched. “After dinner,” he said eventually, sounding disgusted, “I was feeling rather good about myself. About us; our company.” He often referred to MCAC that way: ‘our company’. As if it wasn’t his name on it, his money in it; I just worked there. But I thought it was nice of him, anyway.

“You should,” I insisted, when he didn’t say anything else. “We’ve done well so far.” We genuinely had. Even if nothing else panned out, the hardware we were expecting ought to lead to big things on its own, assuming we could get our software working with it.

“ _You’ve_ done great,” he said, strangely bitter. “All I’ve done is the rich-boy dancing monkey act for people impressed enough by my name and my accent to give us a shot. But you’ve been out there… going above and beyond for us.”

“It’s nothing more than Emily’s done,” I said. I felt like she didn’t get enough appreciation. Not only did she have to fend off the same crap I had to, she’d shielded me from the worst elements of it _and_ she’d done it while effectively training me. None of that was in her contract. I’d be angling for a huge bonus for her, as well as the tryout at MCAC. I suppressed a smile; I wouldn’t have to worry any more about her encountering a boy wearing my face when she turned up at the offices. It’s a good thing I turned out to be trans after all, or the following few weeks would probably have been farcical.

“ _She_ didn’t have _me_ … pushing her.”

Oh crap. This _was_ about what Sophie said to him.

“You didn’t—” I said.

“I did,” he interrupted. “You know, we had a lovely dinner together. And as usual, I enjoyed it too much.” He shot me a sad smile. “Far too much. But, after, I went to the bar for a coffee to give you some space and that’s when I started thinking things over.”

“What things?” I asked.

“About my behaviour. About how I abused your trust,” James whispered. “How I pushed you into this.”

“James, you’ve never—”

“Remember when you called me out? About getting Ben to take your clothes away that first night? About taking away your agency? So you could ‘get more into character’?” I’d never seen finger quotes articulated with such contempt before. “But that wasn’t why I did it. It was just what I told Ben. The real reason was just… selfishness. Like _everything_ I do.”

“What—”

“You work for me!” he practically shouted, gesticulating with such exaggeration he threw the empty plastic bottle across the room. “And what do I pay you? A _fraction_ of your worth. But when it’s something _I_ want from _you_ …” He lowered his voice again. “Hair extensions. Clothes. I threw money at… this. All because I _wanted_ it.” I think he would have spat the word if he could.

I was determined to get a word in edgeways. “We _needed_ it!” I insisted. “For the company! So our work would have a chance to get recognised! We agreed!”

“Just a flimsy excuse,” he hissed from between gritted teeth. “Just a stupid idea of mine based on nothing more than…” He trailed off, and stared at nothing for a few moments. “And you! You just… _went along with it_. Because you are kind and helpful and good and— and—”

“James—”

“We could have sold our software without making you parade around like that. _You_ could have sold it. We didn’t need this. It was all just… my vanity. My ego. All because I wanted it. Because I can’t tell a favour from a game from a— a— a ruinous fantasy.”

He was talking himself further into the pit. I put a finger against his lips so he couldn’t interrupt me, turning his head at the same time so he had to look at me.

“All this… self-loathing seems to be predicated on the idea that I had a miserable time,” I said gently. “I didn’t. Once I got past my inhibitions, I—”

“You shouldn’t have _had_ to!” he said, through my finger. He took my hand and lowered it, holding it in both of his, and gently stroked the base of my thumb. Until he seemed to realise what he was doing and dropped it like a hot rock. “Sorry,” he mumbled.

“What for?” I asked. “Sorry for being kind? Sorry for helping me through this whole thing _which I agreed to do?_ Or is it sorry for holding my hand?” This was a risk. “Sorry for being gentle with me? Sorry for touching me at all?”

He looked like I’d kicked him off a cliff.

“I would have done it again, you know,” he said in an empty voice. “Made choices for you. If you hadn’t called me out. Would have taken your agency away _any way I could,_ just to make you stay like this. Before we started this I thought it was going to be like how it was with Ben, just kind of fun, but as soon as I saw you all that went out the window and I just— I just _needed_ you, Alex. Needed you to stay. Like that. I don’t know what shit I would have tried to pull, but this little _voice_ just kept saying, never let her stop. Never let her go back.”

I took great solace in the pronoun this time. I don’t know why it had ever bothered me before. Except, I suppose, it had been prodding at wounds I didn’t know I had.

“But you didn’t,” I said softly.

“But I _wanted_ to. So much.”

“But you didn’t,” I repeated. “And look at me; I’ve been having a great time!”

“You’re just lying to be kind,” James muttered. I shook my head firmly. “Sophie was right,” he added, after a few moments of silence.

“Did she say you were playing with me?” I suggested, knowing full well she had. “Taking advantage of my, uh, compliant nature to push me into doing things?”

“She was practically _quoting_ you, Alex! She said I was dressing you up, enjoying myself at your expense. Which is what _you_ said, that time in the office; you said I was _playing_ with you!”

“And then we talked and we decided that you weren’t!” I replied, frantic. “Or, at the very least, that I was enjoying it, too! And remember what _you_ said? That I was becoming something more than I was.” I’d held onto that phrasing in the back of my mind, apparently. My subconscious is always ten steps ahead of my dumbass regular consciousness. “And you were right.”

“But that’s just it! You were just Alex and then I came along and I _turned_ you into— into something that I wanted, out of— out of pure selfishness.”

“You know what Sophie said to me?” I asked, trying to break his destructive — not to mention, inaccurate — train of thought. “In the restaurant bathroom? She asked me point-blank if I was going to hurt you. She asked me if I was playing a— a _game_ with all this. And she said she was worried because she thought you’d fallen for the woman you saw when you looked at me.” I couldn’t bring myself to say ‘fallen in love with’. “And she wanted to know if I was going to string you along. If _I_ was going to play with _you._ ”

“But—” he said, and stopped. His brain had clearly thrown an error.

“James,” I whispered, “there’s one thing you’re right about. I _was_ ‘just Alex’.” He suddenly looked like he wanted to defend my honour or something, so I doubled down. “It’s true, and you know it. I existed only for work; I threw myself into it. There was nothing in my life, except work. And… and _you_.” I swallowed. My mouth was dry and my throat was aching, as if my body wanted to stop me from saying what I had to say next. But I knew I had to keep going. Hiding the way I felt, hiding the revelations I’d had, would only harm us both. Better to put everything on the line now than wait even another minute. “You showed me there was another way I could be. You showed me _this_ , and whether originally it was for expediency’s sake, or even for a laugh, you know what the amazing thing is? The total fucking miracle? It turns out this is _me_. This is _who I am_. The old me, the boy me, was a holding pattern, a defence mechanism; a dead end. A pit I would never have climbed out of because I didn’t even know I was in it.” I smiled at him, desperately hoping I was getting through to him. “Until you. And this whole deeply silly, incredibly wonderful booth babe thing.”

“Trade show model,” he corrected in a whisper.

“You’re damn right,” I said. “You reached into this sad boy, a boy so sad he didn’t know what happiness even was, and you found _me._ ”

“What do you mean, ‘found you’?” James asked. He was staring at me now with an intensity I’d never seen in him. A hunger.

“I’m not going back,” I said slowly. “The old me is gone for good.” His eyebrows were still knotted; I wasn’t being clear enough. Time to stop being oblique. “I’m not taking the hair extensions out next week; I’m not returning the dresses. Sorry about the damage to the company credit card. And I’ll buy the bloody tits off of Ben until I can grow my own. I need this to never stop.”

“What are you saying?” he said, eyes wide.

“James, I’m transgender. I’m a transgender woman. I think I always have been, but I never knew. There was always _something_ wrong with me, something missing, but I never worked it out. Just assumed that was the way life was. That it was how everyone felt all the time. Until this. Until you.”

I closed my eyes. It was finally out there. No take-backs.

James ruined it, naturally.

“But I still pushed you, because _I_ —”

“No!” I interrupted, raising my shut-the-fuck-up finger. “You said yourself, back before we left London, you’d never seen me come out of my shell before. You said it was like I was a different person. So _if_ you were pushing me, and yeah, I’ll grant that maybe you were, it’s because you saw something in me I hadn’t yet seen for myself!”

“Don’t make me out to be so noble,” he said, still miserable. “ _Just last night_ I was trying to tell you you shouldn’t switch back. And I wasn’t being kind, in that moment; just selfish.”

I frowned. “I don’t remember that.”

He smiled weakly. “You were falling asleep. I said I thought you didn’t want to go back to how you were. And you just rolled over and smiled and shushed me. I don’t think you heard a single thing I said.” He balled his fists. “And after that, you were just lying there, looking at me, with your eyes almost completely closed, and you were _so_ beautiful, I couldn’t help myself. I started… fantasising about what it would be like if you had always been this way, or if you never had to change back.” He closed his eyes. “More than fantasising.”

I almost hiccuped in surprise. “James Ian McCain!” I exclaimed. “Are you saying you _masturbated_ to me?”

His cheeks burned red, and a part of me liked letting him be the one who was embarrassed for once. The rest of me simply hated seeing him so miserable.

“It wasn’t the first time,” he whispered.

“Is _that_ why you’re feeling so guilty?” I asked, hooking a finger under his chin and raising his head until he opened his eyes and looked at me.

He didn’t say anything. Damn. Breaking him out of his guilt was going to require me to lay everything out. Not just trivial stuff, like the seismic shift in my self-concept; _everything._

“You know the first night?” I said quietly, a little unable to believe I was about to tell him what I was about to tell him. “After the whole measuring me thing? When I went to get changed and you fell asleep on the sofa?” He nodded. “Do you remember kissing me?”

He groaned. “I thought I dreamed that,” he said.

“Nope. I covered you in a blanket, and you grabbed me and kissed me. I didn’t really… process it at the time, and you were mostly asleep so it was this whole sloppy mess, but even so it was the first time a kiss had really made me feel _anything_.”

“Sorry,” he whispered.

“Afterwards,” I continued, “I slept in your bed. Everything around me smelled like you, and I loved it. I fell asleep thinking about the restaurant, thinking about the kiss; thinking about you. And I dreamed of you touching me. James, I dreamed of you _fucking_ me.” He was just staring at me now. “And the next night, alone, in my own place, I kind of made the dreams happen myself.”

“What do you mean?” he asked, apparently unable to look away from me.

“You’re going to make me say it, aren’t you?” I sighed. “I wanked over you, James. I fantasised about touching you, about you touching me — me as a woman, I might add. I imagined you hoisting me up on your desk and finger-fucking me right there in your office.” I leaned closer to him, and I couldn’t resist teasing him a little. “And you were _so. Good._ I mean, at the time I was too confused about what the hell was going on to really understand why I was doing it — and _why_ I needed to imagine myself as a woman to get off on the idea of being with you — but I knew I desperately needed to do it and I didn’t want to stop.”

James looked like he was trying to form words but couldn’t for some reason.

“All I want,” I said, “when I’m around you, is to touch you, and to be touched by you.”

“Um—” he started, but I interrupted him because I needed him to know the truth, without doubt, in the simplest possible terms.

“James. I’m a woman. And I’m in love with you.”

  


  


I don’t know what I expected. Probably near the bottom of the list, especially considering the way James had been since he’d shown up at my door, was for him to burst out laughing.

“Oh my God—” he gasped out, between wheezes.

“James,” I said, juggling options as to whether I ought to be mortally offended or mortally wounded, “I’m serious.”

“Oh no,” James managed, “I totally believe you. I don’t. Know why. I’m laughing!”

I needed to take charge of the situation. I started running one hand up and down his spine again, to calm him as gently as I could. With the other hand I took his, which was in his lap, and squeezed it.

He got control of himself.

“Fuck,” he summarised.

“Yeah,” I said.

“All this time,” he said, smiling, “I’ve been looking at you, talking to you — fuck, lusting after you — and feeling guilty, and then feeling confused because I’ve never been into guys in the slightest, and then feeling _double-_ confused because I didn’t _think_ I was into you in a _guy_ way, and thinking of you as a woman and feeling guilty _again_ because in my head it was me who was making you do that…”

“Believe me,” I said, “it’s been similar inside my head, too.” I let his hand go so I could finger-quote. “‘Why am I so attracted to James?’ ‘Why don’t I hate dressing like this?’ ‘Why don’t I fancy Emily or Vicky or Sophie?’ and especially, ‘Why am I dreading going back to being the old Alex?’ What a fucking rollercoaster.” I sighed. “What a pair of fucking idiots,” I added, unable to stop myself from giggling.

“I can’t believe we’ve just been chewing over all of this completely separately,” he said. “We’re supposed to be friends, but—”

“Let’s make a deal,” I interrupted. “Next time one of us starts going crazy, we bring the other one into the loop early, so we either go nuts together, or we figure it out together.”

“Deal,” James said.

I let myself flop backwards onto the bed. James followed me and we lay there staring at the ceiling for a few moments before I felt around for his hand and took it in mine, finger-by-finger. And for a while, lying there, sharing our body heat, enjoying the single point of connection between us, was enough.

Until it wasn’t.

I let go of his hand and rolled over, so I was facing him. Purely for the purposes of keeping my balance and with no ulterior motive whatsoever, I put my arm across his chest and my head on his shoulder. His chest, rising and falling in time with his breathing, warmed my fingers. I watched him watch me.

“Do you mind if I—?” I said, terminating the sentence because I wasn’t quite brave enough to finish it.

He grinned at me, the bastard. “Do I mind if you what?” he asked.

I gave him a look but he remained unrepentant, so I shrugged. I leaned over to him, putting more of my weight on his chest, and kissed him on the cheek. He was a little stubbly and it tickled my lower lip, which was such a delightfully odd sensation that I kissed him again on the jaw, running my lips gently over a couple of centimetres of skin. I let myself rest against him for a moment and then pushed away, still watching him, almost completely certain that what I’d just done was okay but with a little nagging core of me that was terrified it wasn’t.

He propped himself up, moving to lie on his side so we were facing.

“Alex Brewer,” he said quietly and teasingly slowly, “what _do_ you think you’re doing?”

 _Screw it._ “This,” I said, and pulled myself towards him, closing the distance between us to nothing and closing my mouth over his. As my lips pressed against his, his free hand found the small of my back and pulled me even closer. Both our lips parted and his tongue entered my mouth at the same time I realised the pressure against my leg was his burgeoning erection.

The realisation made me break the kiss. I pulled away, giggling.

“What?” he asked, smiling but confused.

“Um,” I said, pointing crotchward with my eyes. He didn’t seem to get it, so I repeated myself more firmly: “ _Um._ ”

“Oh!” he exclaimed, finally realising just how much dick he was pushing into my thigh. “Sorry,” he added sheepishly.

I kissed him on the lips again, just a quick peck this time. “Not looking for an apology,” I said. “It’s nice to know I merit a proper stiffie.”

“I mean,” he said, “it’s not the first time. If you’ve seen me walking funny recently, that’s probably why.” And he kissed me back.

I snorted, which was a dreadfully attractive thing for me to do while he was kissing me. And then I sat up, hooking a hand around his neck to encourage him to follow suit. We sat next to each other, James perched on the edge of the bed again, me practically in his lap.

Keeping eye contact with him the whole time, to make sure it was okay, I slipped a hand down to his crotch and located his dick. God, the thing was _massive!_ Well, actually it was probably just kind of normal-sized, but it was my first dick, so it didn’t have any competition to speak of; it was massive in a field of one. Through the loose, thin material of his trousers, I massaged his penis and felt it twitch under my fingers.

My own dick, trapped in my underwear, responded in kind.

 _Fuck,_ I realised. I almost fell off his lap.

“What’s wrong?” James said, responding instantly with a steadying hand on my back and a concerned look on his face. “Too fast?”

I swallowed. “No,” I said, my heart sinking as I realised what it was that had killed my mood. “Not too fast. I… kinda remembered I have one of those, too.”

I must have looked as miserable as James had when he’d first come into the room, because he embraced me with both arms, practically picked me up — wow, he was strong — and laid me back down on the bed. He lay down next to me; we were arranged more or less as we had been before.

“Talk to me,” he said gently. “If you can. If you want to.”

I looked up at the ceiling. “I don’t know if I can,” I said. “I don’t know if I can talk about _this_ with _you._ ”

“What do you mean?” he asked, sounding a little hurt.

I sighed. “I want you to see me as a woman,” I admitted. “And that’s _such_ a big turnaround from how you’ve always seen me, before all this. I worry it’s temporary. Fragile.”

“Alex…” He shuffled closer, put an arm around me. “The moment I started seeing you as a woman, days ago now, you stopped making _sense_ as a man. Being reminded of certain facts about your anatomy isn’t going to change that.”

“It’s that simple, is it?”

“It’s that simple,” he confirmed, and sealed it with a kiss on my cheek. “And you should _know_ that. It’s why I’ve been beating myself up for days. Which, thank you, by the way, for putting a stop to that; the bruises were getting a bit much.”

I sat up suddenly. “Bruises? Where—?”

“ _Metaphorical_ bruises,” he corrected me, pushing me gently back down onto the bed. “But your concern is appreciated,” he added in a slightly mocking tone.

“You sod,” I told him.

“You can talk to me about anything,” he said. “It _won’t_ affect how I see you.”

“It’s confusing,” I admitted. “So much of this is new to me. It’s like—” I thought for a moment, looking for a way to put it into words, as much for my own benefit as for his. “It’s like I’m opening all the doors and windows in my apartment all at once and seeing light for the first time, and the light is _wonderful_ , but it’s not just the light I can see; it’s showing me exactly how dusty and dirty and broken all the stuff in my flat is and has always been…” I frowned. The metaphor was getting away from me.

“I think I get it,” he said. “You mean, you always _should_ have thought of yourself this way, and now that you do, it’s like every time you encounter an old habit or instinct or whatever, you’re seeing it through new eyes. Like everything’s recontextualised.”

“That, and I really hate my shitty apartment,” I said. “I think you’re getting this faster than I am, to be honest.”

He smirked at me. “Hey, I’ve been hoping you’d want to stay like this for days now. I, uh, did a little reading online.”

Oh God. “Oh God.”

“Sorry,” he said, not sounding remotely sorry.

“You probably know more than I do, then,” I said. “I chatted online with a nice trans guy who helped me sort through what I wanted, in the big picture sense. And that was really useful. But since then all I’ve done is skim a ‘what next’ FAQ. I have lots of questions for myself about surgery and lifestyle changes and stuff that I haven’t even begun to answer.”

“What do you want to do about…?” He didn’t finish the sentence, but pointed down with his eyes, the way I had earlier.

“I don’t know,” I said. “I’m still sorting out how I feel about it, I guess.” He smiled at me, gently, encouraging me to keep talking, to pick my way through this topic at my own pace. God, it was nice to talk about this stuff out loud, to someone else, and not simply stew about it inside my own head. Because inside my head is where I keep all my idiocy, and even sensible thoughts get corrupted if they spend too long in there. “Right now… I kind of hate it. My prick and stuff.” A horrible word for a thing I wasn’t too fond of. “And, thinking back, I’ve never really liked it much. Never liked to touch it, never liked to use it.” I laughed bitterly. “And I think I might have just clued you in on why I could never keep a girlfriend.”

“Poor Alex,” he said, with humour. “I’m glad I don’t have any competition, though.”

I groaned. “I do,” I realised. “How many women have you been with?”

“None like you,” he said. “None who know me like you do.” He pulled my top up a little and started stroking my exposed belly with a finger. It was nice. “So if you hate it,” he continued, “do you think you’ll get rid of it?”

“I don’t know,” I said. “I wonder how much of hating it is bound up with how I don’t like my body at the moment. You know, that first night when I went back home alone? I tried to shower but the moment I saw myself naked, without the… the helpers—” I poked myself in the tit, “—I felt really, _really_ weird. I couldn’t shower after seeing that. Didn’t want to be naked any more. Looking back, that was a pretty big clue.”

He surprised me with another kiss on my cheek. I’d been staring at the ceiling again and didn’t see him come in. I smiled, and reached over to kiss him back before he could escape. We stayed like that for a few moments, gentle pressure on each other’s lips, but I let him go in the end. I wanted to keep talking. Keep thinking.

“If I liked my body more,” I said, “it’s possible my feelings about it might change. Or they might stay exactly the same. But people say going on hormones can really alter your self-image, so who knows?”

“You’re planning to go on hormones?” James asked.

“Yes,” I said firmly. “It’s the one thing I’m sure about. I was _this_ close to loading up an online pharmacy when you knocked. You can go through the NHS for them but apparently it can take _years_.” I made a face which James echoed. “And you can get them from a private doctor which is much quicker but expensive, and still slower than just buying them online.”

He frowned. “Won’t you need blood tests and stuff?”

“Yes,” I said, “but not as much as I need to stop what’s left of my male development in its tracks. The more I think about it, the more freaked out I get that there’s testosterone in my system doing a little bit of damage every day. I’m getting away with it now, but I _know_ it can’t last.”

“Hmm,” he said. I hoped dearly he wasn’t going to fight me on this. “What if you got some online but saw a private doctor as soon as possible? I can help with the cost if it’s too much money.”

I think my eyes bulged out of their sockets. “You’d do that?” On the one hand, I was handing even more power over my life to him; on the other, he had the money and I didn’t. And it wasn’t like I was anything but ride or die for James now, anyway.

He laughed. “Of course! What can it cost? A couple of thousand?”

“Um, I think more like a couple of hundred,” I said sheepishly. Rich boys!

“That,” he said, breaking the sentence up by kissing me again, “is more than fine.”

  


  


We hugged for a while. I think my mini-freakout had drained all the sexiness out of the room, but there was still something special about just lying and holding each other. He was gentle with me, and I clung to him like I’d never had a boyfriend before. Which, yeah.

“Ugh,” he said, breaking the silence, “it’s getting late.”

I made an unhappy noise that was muffled by the way my head was buried in his chest. “Don’t wanna go to sleep,” I said childishly. “I like this too much.”

“Sorry,” James said. “We have to sell stuff again tomorrow.”

“Sucks,” I mumbled.

“Go clean your teeth,” he ordered.

Reluctantly I extracted myself from his embrace and plodded off to the bathroom to clean my teeth, inspect my hair, stare blearily at myself in the mirror and wonder how dark my under-eye circles would be in the morning, et cetera. I was halfway done when James entered the bathroom, carrying his overnight bag.

He was naked, except for his boxers.

_Jesus…_

I think I dribbled some toothpaste down my chin. The man was a fucking demigod; I had no idea what he saw in me. Maybe it was just that I was easy to tease: he grinned like a lunatic when he saw the effect his naked body had on me.

I nearly spat the rest of my toothpaste at him. But my vengeful instincts were calmed when he stood next to me at the sink, loaded up his own toothbrush, and kissed me on the top of the head before he started on his teeth. Mollified, I leaned against him and finished up. Bless him, he even handed me a towel when I got done washing my face and was still blinking water out of my eyes. And when I finished drying myself he wordlessly handed me a tube of moisturiser.

Yeah, fine. I’d keep him.

I couldn’t resist running a hand across his back on my way out of the bathroom.

Alone in the main room, I shucked off my jeans and top and dumped them on the floor. I didn’t mean to leave them in a crumpled heap — Ben would have words, I was sure — but I caught sight of myself in the mirror, almost naked but with the tucking knickers and the bra still on, boobs still nestled in the cups, and it started me thinking.

I examined myself critically, wondering how HRT would change me. I had pretty narrow shoulders but my hips were even narrower. I knew I could expect some fleshiness around the butt and thighs, and probably a rounder belly; hopefully it would be enough to fill my lower half out and balance it against my shoulders. I was trying to imagine what home-grown breasts would look like on my frame when an arm snaked around my waist, taking me by surprise.

“Hey, beautiful,” James whispered into my hair. “Come to bed?”

Suddenly self-conscious, I tried to pull away, but he held me firm.

“James!” I protested.

“If you’re thinking anything other than, ‘James thinks I look incredibly sexy,’” he said, “then you’re so very, very wrong.”

“I look weird,” I said, frowning at our reflections. Next to him, I looked scrawny and unfeminine. In that moment I could not have more wanted to look in the flesh the way the boobs and butt pads made me look under clothes.

“You look beautiful,” he insisted.

I turned away from the mirror, choosing instead to look up at his face, in case it made it easier to believe him. It certainly made it easier to kiss him.

“Thanks,” I said. “I don’t believe it, but thanks.”

He put both arms around me and lifted me again — I was starting to think he just liked doing that — and put me down on the edge of the bed.

“Then believe this,” he said, looking down at me and smiling. “Looking at you, right now, all I want is to touch you, and to be touched by you.”

He was a charming little bastard, I had to give him that. I let him usher me into bed and pull the covers over both of us. He turned out the light and gathered me up under one arm, which he cinched around my belly. I fell into the little divot we were making in the middle of the mattress. Giggling, I arranged myself so I was facing away from him. He let me wriggle and fidget until we were spooning and then kissed me on the back of the head.

“Goodnight, Alex,” he whispered, and kissed me again.

I covered his arm with mine, squeezing it against my stomach.

“Goodnight, James,” I replied, and gradually fell asleep, guided by the gentle in-out rhythm of his chest against my back.


	11. Chapter 11

My phone woke me, having been set to go off at 7am by some other, much stupider version of me. I batted weakly at it until it shut up and pressed myself back into James’ chest. His arm was still wrapped around me like it had been all night, and I drew an almost animalistic comfort from it. I’d never woken up in the embrace of someone I loved before, and I wanted to indulge myself.

And, God, yes, I loved him. That was the last certainty to snap into place, confirmed by a night of gentle dreams and warmth. I never wanted this beautiful, mildly infuriating man to let go of me, couldn’t imagine a life without him. I felt a primal need to burrow into him, and so I did, pulling his arm more tightly around me. He moaned happily, unconsciously, and I lay there a while, gently stroking his fingers. His warm breath moistened my shoulder; his morning erection poked my butt. I arched my back, trying to extract myself from the ministrations of his dick while still maintaining full-body contact with the rest of him, but it didn’t work, so I reached down and slipped his penis back inside the lining of his underwear. I tried not to linger on the task, lest he wake up with my fingers on his boner and start getting ideas.

It was too early for ideas; too early even for vague concepts. I wanted nothing more than to stay in bed until my brain finished assembling something approaching a conscious mind out of the Lego bricks of id, ego, superego, newly-acquired knowledge about dresses, generalised embarrassment, and the detailed files a small but dedicated part of me was putting together about the exact way James’ dick had felt in my hand.

I let myself drift.

Gradually I woke up enough to realise my feet were cold, so I gathered the sheets around me from where they’d bunched up. A vague memory presented itself: at some point in the night I’d overheated, but rather than wriggle out of James’ embrace I’d thrown off half the covers. Once again I had to give unconscious Alex more points than regular Alex; of the two of us, she continued to make the better decisions.

There was that pronoun again. _She_. Still something I was getting used to. I liked the feeling of it, though.

_She. She. She._

I squirmed a little. How had it taken me _so_ long to come to such an _obvious_ conclusion? I was a woman, and it was the most natural thing in the world.

I was a woman who needed to pee.

Fucksake.

Grudgingly I levered James’ arm off of me, slid out from under it and gently lowered it onto the mattress. With any luck I’d be able to get all the way out of bed without waking him. I took a moment to admire his sleeping body — and to wipe a little drool off his chin; adorable — and escaped to the bathroom.

  


  


I brushed my teeth and pissed at the same time. I’m a multitasker.

  


  


My junk was sufficiently sweaty (and residually sore) after a night in the horrible tucking underwear — which I was going to have to get used to wearing for the foreseeable future, I realised with a sigh; I wondered if you could get fast-tracked for surgery if you told the doctors you really really just hated tucking — that I decided I needed a shower before I did anything else. I removed the bra and boobs and put a shower cap on; going another day without washing my hair was pushing it, but I still hadn’t had time to read up on how to wash my extensions.

Unfortunately I caught my reflection in the mirror, and it made me a little dizzy; I was still uncomfortable with my nakedness. Without Ben’s little assistants, which I had become first surprisingly used to and then even more surprisingly reliant upon, I couldn’t lie to myself about the shape of my body any more. It was scrawny and narrow and sort of strangely taut and overall just not very pleasant to be in. I told myself firmly that I was going to be doing something about that very soon, and hopped in the shower, to cover the parts of me I didn’t like with soap.

When I was done I shrugged on a robe and left the bathroom to discover James snoring noisily. I fished a fresh bra and knickers out of my suitcase as quietly as I could, snapped a hair tie around my wrist, and returned to the bathroom to reattach my tits.

 _So_ much better. Strange how they made such a difference to my self-image. I blinked at myself a few times in the bathroom mirror, re-fixing my internal picture of myself as someone who looked like _this_ and not like that other person, who’d been alarmingly negligent with her body and not fed it the sorts of things a growing body needs, like estrogen. The fake boobs quickly warmed to my body temperature in the steamy bathroom air, which helped with the sensation that they were a part of me. I couldn’t help giggling a little as I remembered thinking, a mere day or two ago, how much more convenient it would be for the whole modelling thing if I could grow my own, and suppressed a scowl as I realised I should never tell anyone I’d ever thought that or they’d start calling me an egg again.

Back to the bathroom mirror. My hair definitely needed a wash, but it wasn’t going to get one, so I pulled it back into a ponytail with one hand and posed, examining myself, trying to decide if putting my hair up this way or that way would make me look like a man. Shoving it all under a hat hadn’t, but my paranoia was nothing if not proactive.

Having finally accepted myself as a woman — and accepted that ‘passing’ was going to become a thing I should probably keep half an eye on, for safety’s sake if nothing else — I wasn’t the greatest fan of my hairline, but I realised as I shifted my hair around my head that it wasn’t _too_ bad. I hadn’t receded, thank goodness, and while it was a little farther withdrawn at the temples than I’d prefer, it was probably still in the ‘normal’ range for a woman. I gave in to my paranoia a little, though, and teased a couple of locks out to frame my face and hide my temples, giving them a quick blast of hairspray after the rest of my hair was tied into place. A ponytail wouldn’t be as glamorous as my hair had been on Friday and Saturday, but at least it would help hide the extent to which my hair needed a good shampooing.

I frowned at my reflection: a few beard hairs were starting to poke through. I fought against another wave of vertigo — it was like every part of the whirlwind makeover Ben had dragged me though was starting to come apart — and took a deep breath, reminding myself I was going to be able to address this, too. Sternly I glared at myself in the mirror, squashed the unhelpful sensations, and set to dealing with the beard hairs, taking care to moisturise thoroughly after, lest Ben give me the same look he’d turned on me when he’d discovered I hadn’t been moisturising my legs.

As an afterthought, I also moisturised my legs.

  


  


Hot breath on the back of my neck broke my concentration. I looked up from the laptop screen and there was James, looking down on me like some sort of beautiful naked man.

“Hi,” he said, smiling.

“Hi,” I replied, craning my neck back in my chair, as far as it could go. He took the prompt and leaned down farther, enough to kiss me on the lips. God _damn_ , he felt good. I reached up and caressed the scruffy hair on the back of his neck (and made a mental note to remind him to book a haircut when we got back to London). I scrunched my fingers into his skin.

He continued to kiss me. I continued to let him, writhing gently under his lips.

“Is that…?” he asked when he was done.

I opened my eyes and saw him squinting at the laptop. Grudgingly I let him go, letting my fingers stroke his cheek as I withdrew my hand. My neck was starting to get sore, anyway.

“Yeah,” I said. The web browser was open on the shopping cart for an online pharmacy, the one the FAQ had recommended. I’d loaded up the suggested drug cocktail and had been waiting for my courage to build up enough to make the ‘complete order’ button properly clickable.

James crouched down next to my chair and leaned against my bare legs. I’d slipped a top on when I’d come to sit down but I’d been too seized by the need to start making things _happen_ in my transition to bother with trousers. Seeing those nascent facial hairs, seeing myself naked without the boobs or the pads, it had all bothered me, more than I’d expected. But when I’d sat down, looked up the details and filled the cart, something inside me got scared.

“‘Cyproterone acetate’,” he read off the screen, “and ‘estradiol valerate’. Hormones?”

I nodded. “The first one’s an anti-androgen, but yeah.”

“You’re definitely going through with it, then?” he said, doing that neutral thing with his voice again. I wondered if he was still feeling guilty about having ‘made’ me do all this.

“Yes,” I said, trying to sound more certain than I felt.

“Good,” James said, squeezing my bare thigh.

I dispelled the last of my doubts and clicked the button before any more could show up. The guy who’d talked to me on Reddit was right — as were the other handful of people who’d commented after I’d gone to bed — transition really was just a whole lot of little decisions, very few of which were final.

“You don’t look sure,” James said, frowning up at me. I must have been showing my emotions on my face again. Damnable habit.

“It’s just cold feet,” I said. “I want this, I really do. It’s just kind of scary. Making such a big change.” A whole lot of little changes, sure, but all rolled up together they were still pretty big.

“I’m proud of you, you know,” James said. He stood up and hooked a hand under my arm, guiding me out of my chair. “Come here.”

I fell into his arms, suddenly completely overwhelmed. My life was going to change _so_ much, and while I wanted it — needed it — I couldn’t claim it wasn’t intimidating. James encircled me and I hugged him back as hard as I could, not realising I was crying until my cheeks wettened.

“Oh, James,” I said into his shoulder.

“Sshh, Alex,” he whispered.

I still loved it when he said my name.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen,” I said. “I’m going to change and I know what’s _supposed_ to happen but it’s still— it’s still—”

“It’s still change,” he said. “And change is scary. Even when you want it. You do still want it, yes?”

“I want it,” I promised. “God, I want it.”

“Then,” he said, tightening his hold on me, “whatever happens, and however you change, I’ll be right there with you.”

I buried myself in him.

  


  


I don’t know how long we stood there like that, holding each other. James stroked my spine, whispered quiet reassurances into my ears, and I just leaned into him, made him my world. He let me have all the time I needed, and when I finally came up for air I felt clear. Unafraid.

Less afraid, anyway.

I pulled away from him a little, enough to look up at his face, and smiled to let him know I was okay. He smiled back.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Any time,” he replied, and kissed me on the forehead.

“Sorry I’m a basket case.”

He rested his chin gently against my head. “As long as you’re _my_ basket case.”

“For as long as you want me,” I said. I wasn’t quite able to dispel the fear that he’d drop me as soon as a _real_ woman came along, and—

I cut myself off. Paranoia was unhelpful. _And it’s ‘cis woman’, you dork,_ I added to myself.

He looked down at me again, smiling gently. “Do you still mean everything you said last night?” he said. “Not just about transitioning; about me? About us?”

I met his eyes. “Every word. Even the stuff I said that made me sound like a complete idiot. Maybe especially that stuff.” I blinked, and braced myself. “Do _you_ still mean what you said?”

He kissed me again. “Yes,” he said. “Even more so now than I did last night.”

  


  


James, claiming he was ‘cold’ or some nonsense like that, had put a top on, against my protestations. I told him he was making an unwise decision, that he should walk around in just his underwear for his health, like they do in Scandinavian countries, but he saw through my clever ruse somehow. He’d kissed me — possibly to shut me up; he was nothing if not devilishly cunning like that — and sat me back down, making promises about coffee.

I watched him fight with the cafetiere and I pondered. I was glad to have the online pharmacy order done, to have taken a concrete step towards proper, real transition. If the facial hair was going to grow back, if the extensions eventually would fall out, if I had to look at my unadorned body every time I had a shower, at least I’d have the medication waiting for me.

By this evening I’d have left this strange little bubble I’d been living in the last few days, utterly changed in so many ways — or, I supposed more accurately, simply cognisant of the person I’d always been but never been forced to recognise — and I’d have to face up to whatever living the real world was going to be like, as a transgender woman. Intimidating.

James put a cup of coffee down on the desk in front of me, and I blinked, realising I’d zoned out. He’d been talking and I’d completely missed it.

“Thanks,” I said, “and sorry: I was miles away. What were you saying?”

He pulled up a chair and sat down next to me, close enough that our bare legs could touch.

“It’s fine,” he said. “I asked if you wanted to get a blood test organised for next week.”

“Why so soon?” I asked. I’d loaded my online shopping cart with what the internet promised was the usual dose given to newly-transitioning trans women, and I’d assumed that would be that until I worked my way through the system and eventually got to see an actual doctor about it.

“I had a thought,” he said, “so I did a bit of Googling.” He brandished his phone. I tried not to sigh; he could be dangerous with that thing. “So, you pass really easily, right? With just makeup and hair and stuff, but without, uh, hormonal intervention. It wasn’t difficult for people to start seeing you as a woman.” He coughed. “It, uh, definitely wasn’t difficult for _me_ to start seeing you as a woman.”

“Yes,” I said slowly, drawing out the vowel. I had to grant that I’d had it incredibly easy.

“And, honestly, looking at you without any makeup on right now, you _still_ pass,” he said.

I looked away. I felt obscurely bad about that, like I’d been handed a gift I hadn’t worked for, or something. “Yeah,” I said, “but I still don’t really understand how.”

“I mean,” James said, “I don’t think you ever really _saw_ yourself properly before. You always thought you looked younger than your age, and because that’s what you always complained about I always went along with it, but… Okay, hear me out: I think you might have unusual hormone levels for a, um, for an assigned male your age.” Yeah, he’d definitely been Googling, or possibly just reading the same subreddits I had but with a clearer head; ‘assigned male’ was another new term, albeit one that was easy enough to guess the meaning of. “Maybe low testosterone, maybe something else.”

He had a point. “Maybe,” I said. “So you think I should have a blood test to establish, what, my base levels before I start medication? In case the doses I have coming are all wrong?” He nodded. “How long would that take?” I didn’t want to wait any longer than I had to.

James held up his phone again. “Like I said before, although I guess you weren’t listening—” I mouthed _sorry_ at him and he bapped me gently with his phone, “—I was doing some reading and I came up with a plan. Subject to your approval, of course.”

I rolled my eyes, but returned his grin. “Let’s hear it, then.”

“So,” he said, scrolling through the document he’d obviously been working on while I’d been away with the fairies, “you get a blood test to establish baseline hormone levels first thing on Monday. We can register you with the health service I use and then it’s just a matter of asking for all this.” He showed me the screen and thumbed through a list of medical-looking words. “The results ought to be ready before your pills come, so when we get them we consult—” he squinted at his phone, “—the_hormone_wizard on Reddit if your levels look significantly different to _these_ —” he showed me the screen again; fucking hell, he had _charts and diagrams,_ “—and you can hopefully start your regimen immediately. Now, the private gender clinic usually responds to booking requests within forty-eight hours, so by Wednesday…” He trailed off. “Are you okay?”

My ears were whistling. I gripped my reassuringly-solid coffee mug. “I’m a little dizzy,” I admitted.

“Sorry,” he said. “I’m going too fast, aren’t I?”

“No!” I said quickly. “I _want_ to go fast. It’s just… a lot of information.”

“You don’t think I’m taking decisions out of your hands because I think I can make them better than you can?” he asked.

“What? Is that— That sounds like a quote.”

“Just something an ex told me,” he said. “I’m trying to watch out for it.”

“Don’t worry,” I said, “I’m grateful. I honestly think it’s better to have your… organisational assistance.” I grimaced. “You saw how long it took me to hit go on the HRT order. What would I be like if I had to book appointments unaided? I know _exactly_ what I want and I’m _still_ liable to panic over each and every step.”

“Alex,” he said, putting his phone down and fixing me with a serious look, “I’ll help as much as I can. As much as you’ll let me. I’ll be overbearing and insistent and _extremely_ annoying but I want you to promise me: if I start pushing you to do something you don’t want to do, or even something you don’t want to do _yet_ , you’ll tell me. Right?”

“I will,” I said.

“I got _extremely_ lucky that what I wanted from you this weekend happened to coincide with what you wanted as well, but I’m very aware that—”

“I _promise_ ,” I interrupted. “I won’t do _anything_ I don’t want to do, no matter how insistent you are. For example.” I set my coffee down on the desk and moved my chair right up next to his, so I could kiss him on the lips. “There. I wanted to do that.”

“Did you now?” he said, grinning.

“Yes.” I kissed him again, but this time he caught me before I could lean away and kept me pressed to him. With a hand on my back he stood us both up. I think my chair fell over behind me, but I wasn’t sure. My attention was kind of elsewhere.

“Is there anything _else_ you want to do?” he asked.

The hand on my back slipped under my top, and the sensation of his fingers against my spine galvanised something inside me. I pushed towards him, making him take a step back, and another, and another, my lips almost reaching his every time, until his legs touched the side of the bed and he fell backwards onto the mattress. I followed him, angling sideways slightly so we both hit the bed at the same time, but I didn’t give up my advantage.

I reached behind his head and took the scruff of his neck in my hand, pulling his head forwards to meet mine.

“Yes,” I said again, and kissed him.

God, I never wanted to let go of him. I kissed him and kissed him, messily and urgently, holding his head exactly where I wanted it, pushing against his body with my own. I felt myself react, down there, inside my knickers, but it didn’t deter me this time; I reached down with my other hand, slipped it inside his underwear, and began to massage the base of his penis. I was pleased to find it already standing to attention.

“Alex, are you—?” he started to say, but I interrupted him with another kiss. I released his head and pulled off his t-shirt, marvelling at the way it slid across his chest. Leaning away from him, I was rewarded with the sight of his naked upper body and it ignited me further. I continued to stroke his dick, delighting in the way it felt under my fingers.

His eyes widened; I took advantage of his hesitation to kiss him again, and then with gentle pressure on his shoulders I guided him back to the edge of the bed, making him sit up. He watched me, obviously wondering what I was planning.

What I was planning was this: I kissed him on the lips, then on the chin, then on his clavicle, then down his chest and stomach. I let him go, stepped off the bed and, without breaking eye contact, kneeled down. I put my thumbs inside the elastic of his underwear and pulled it down.

I hadn’t been prepared for what the sight of his dick would do to me. If I’d been excited before, seeing it bare and erect electrified me in a way I’d never known was possible. Before I even thought about what I was doing I leaned forward and took it into my mouth.

It tasted salty, and maybe a little stale — he hadn’t showered yet — but honestly it was pretty okay. It filled most of my mouth, and I found I couldn’t take all of it so I settled for letting my hand do some of the work. I massaged the base of his penis with my fingers while I licked and caressed the tip with my lips and tongue. Judging by the sounds James started making, it was the right approach. God, I was making him happy, and it felt _good_.

My own dick quirked in its tight little trap, but I didn’t care about it any more; I was already too far gone. I reached down with my other hand and started stroking myself, through the fabric of my underwear. If I didn’t have to engage directly with the thing, all to the better. I let the friction of the fabric do the work for me, pushing against my crotch and rubbing hard, feeling myself stiffen and flex.

James had one hand in my hair now, bumping up against my pony tail and rhythmically pushing against my neck. I took it as a guide and kept time with him with my fingers and tongue, firmly stroking his dick at the base and tip with my nails and my tongue. James let out a noise I’d never heard from him before, and his other hand dug nails-deep into my shoulder. He pushed my head forward, shoving his dick farther into my mouth, almost too far. I didn’t want to gag, so I pushed back with all my strength, and when I was comfortable I splayed my hand around the shaft of his penis and used my finger and thumb to shorten the length that could be forced into my mouth. I didn’t think I would have been strong enough to push against both his arms normally, but he was trembling, so I had the advantage.

He kept squeezing and stroking my neck and shoulder, and I kept up my ministrations in rhythm with his, rubbing myself through my underwear in time, but as the pressure started to build in my spine I couldn’t help going faster. Locked together, we moved as one.

He made another noise, higher-pitched than before, and it took me a second to realise that it’d been me who moaned that time. Involuntarily, hungrily. Free of the concern that he might accidentally shove his dick all the way down my neck, I unclenched my throat and jaw muscles, and my movements became looser, more relaxed, but still in time with his. My fingers pinched and pushed on my dick, through the underwear, and the pressure in my back became heat, a spreading warmth that concentrated in my head, my chest and my crotch. I arched my back, leaned forward, took him as far into my mouth as I could — I think in that moment I would have swallowed him whole — and my knickers wetted and my legs went limp. My shoulders clenched and I had to stop myself from biting down, managing instead just to push forward on his dick, running the length of my tongue, all the way to the back of my throat, against the head of his penis.

James started making unconscious, quiet noises, faster and faster. In my orgasmic glow, they sounded like the sexiest thing I’d ever heard. Now that I was spent I took his penis up with both hands, putting gentle pressure on the base with my thumbs and concentrating on extracting every bit of pleasure I could get out of him with my mouth. Moments later he shuddered, gripped my neck tightly again, and ejaculated.

I was so surprised, I swallowed it.

  


  


We lay side by side on the bed. James had flopped back after we’d disentangled ourselves, and inched up the bed until he was comfortable. I’d followed him and curled up against him, in full post-orgasm mode. I just wanted to cuddle.

Plus my knees hurt.

“Oh my God,” James said.

“Was it okay?” I asked. Performance anxiety after my first blow job; hurrah.

He rolled his eyes. “It was _really_ okay,” he said, after making me wait a few agonising seconds.

“Good,” I said, and kissed him on the cheek. “Never done that before.”

“I feel like we should, um, do you now,” James said slowly, still sounding a little stoned.

I blushed. Absurd that I could still manage embarrassment under such conditions, but I’m talented like that. “I, uh, did myself,” I said. “During.”

“Oh. I didn’t notice. I feel kind of bad about that.”

I reached out for a pillow and beat him with it. He was going to have to stop feeling so guilty all the time. “Yes,” I explained, “you’re definitely an inattentive lover because I was doing extra stuff to myself _completely out of your line of sight._ It’s fine, really.” I kissed him again, to seal the deal, and squirmed a little as the movement made my damp knickers impinge on my consciousness. I needed to change my underwear. “Besides,” I added, “I don’t know if I’m ready to use my, um, my—”

“Got it,” he said, saving me from having to talk about my dick in front of him. “We could always try…?”

His complex mimes were absolutely opaque to me but I was pretty sure I knew what he was getting at all the same. “Anal?” I guessed. He nodded, and had the good grace to look embarrassed himself. Ever since I’d started presenting as a woman I got to see the sheepish, unsure side of James, and I liked it: he was cute when he was flustered. “Between the heels and the uncomfortable underwear I’m walking funny enough, thanks,” I said. “Maybe when we get back home?” Apart from anything else, I needed time to hit the internet and find out the exact mechanics of it. The idea of anal sex was intimidating, but millions of people did it, so it had to be pleasurable to be on the receiving end. 

Hah. If the kids at school who gave me shit for being gay could hear what I was thinking. If they could see what I just _did_. I laughed.

James looked like he was about to say something, but his phone alarm went off. “Fuck,” he said, reaching over to silence it. “It’s eight thirty. Time to be responsible adults.”

“Ugh,” I commented. “Don’t wanna.” I licked my lips. “Hey, do we have any orange juice? I have this strange taste in my mouth and I have no idea how it got there.”

He hit me with the pillow.

  


  


“Where’s Ben, anyway?” I asked James while he showered. I’d rinsed my junk, found a clean pair of underwear, and finished a whole bottle of horrifically-expensive orange juice from the minibar. Now I was just hanging out in the bathroom. “Shouldn’t he be here by now to make me look pretty?”

James stuck his head out from behind the frosted shower glass and made a show of looking me up and down. “Like you need _any_ help with that.”

“I’ll have you know I degrade without professional assistance. Like Cinderella. I require regular ministrations from a drag queen.”

“A ‘performance artist in the medium of drag’,” James corrected, muffled again by the shower. From the sound of his coughing, I think he got water in his mouth while he was trying to be clever.

“I’ll go text him,” I decided, and left the bathroom to do just that. James started singing while I was gone, so I popped back into the bathroom to tease him for his choice of song, which was ‘Lost in the Supermarket’, before I texted Ben.

Ben’s reply was prompt: **Sorry. Running late.**

 **It’s fine,** I replied. **I’m getting ready now.**

I chucked the phone on the bed and returned to the bathroom, in time to see James getting out of the shower, which was entirely the sight I’d been in there for in the first place. Naked, glistening, stepping out into a room misty with vapour, James looked like someone out of one of those movies that make teen girls form violently opposed shipping factions, and I wanted nothing more than to leap on him. Time was pressing, though, so I made do with giving him a kiss and a towel.

“Ben’s running late,” I said when we were done, “so I’m going to make a start on my face.”

“Okay,” James said, and pecked me on the lips as punctuation. “I’ll be out in a minute.”

I slipped the third and thankfully final show dress out of its bag and regarded it for a moment. It was just as horrifically bright blue and shiny as the other two had been, not that I had been expecting anything different. I sighed and laid it on the bed. Then it was time for the hip pads, which I found myself resenting: if I looked fine, fine enough for James, without the extra padding, then I didn’t want to have to put them just to look like I ‘should’. Besides, I’d be growing my own soon enough, although if what I read online was anything to go by, mine were unlikely to grow quite so much.

I felt realigned somewhat, like I’d come to an accommodation with my body. It would change, and that was good, but maybe it wasn’t _so_ awful to inhabit right now.

Then again, it might have just been the post-orgasmic glow.

I examined my body in the mirror, and decided it would do for now. And if I was always going to be a little wider in the shoulder than the hip, then that was okay. Anything but wear foundation garments a minute longer than I had to.

I sighed and pulled on the pads, arranged them to spec, and covered them with the dress. I was sponging foundation around my jawline when James appeared, wearing suit trousers and a shirt which he had, to his credit, not yet buttoned up.

“Hey,” he said, and kissed me on the top of my head.

I waved him away. “Hi, now go away and let me concentrate.”

In the makeup mirror, I saw him frown. “I thought you were supposed to use a brush for that.”

I brandished my blender at him. “You know how long I’ve been doing my own makeup,” I said. “Brushes are advanced class. But anyone can do _this_.” I spotted a smudge by my nose, and got to work on it. “Almost anyone.”

He left me alone after that, and ten minutes later I had what I thought was a creditable impression of Ben’s makeup job from Friday and Saturday. Perhaps a little iffy in the fine details, but I didn’t think I looked like someone who didn’t know what she was doing. Not entirely, anyway.

I stood up, and posed for James, who hadn’t managed so much as to button his shirt.

“How do I look?” I asked.

“Wonderful,” James said, putting down his phone and favouring me with a generous smile.

I took a step toward him. “Good enough for the show floor?” My confidence faltered. “I don’t want to look crap next to Emily.”

James stood up and came over so he could inspect me close-up. “Definitely good enough,” he said. “You look amazing.”

I couldn’t help smiling. “Thanks,” I whispered.

“Aren’t you going to let your hair down?”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” I said. “No. It kind of needs a wash, but I don’t want to fuck up the extensions, so I put it up. Do you think it’s okay?”

James nodded. “Absolutely,” he said, with feeling. “You look… kind of sexy, actually.”

I took another step forward, erasing the distance between us. “Just ‘kind of’ sexy?” I asked with a grin.

“Okay, very sexy,” he said, putting a hand on each of my shoulders to stop my advance. “Makes you look like a hot librarian or teacher or something.”

I laughed. “Did you, by any chance, have a crush on the geography teacher at school?”

James smiled. “Maths teacher. She wore her hair in a pony just like that, and had these little sweaters…” He trailed off.

“Buy _me_ a little sweater,” I said, standing on tip-toes so I could be closer to his face, and continued in a sultry whisper, “and I’ll make you solve equations.”

I went in for the kiss at that point, but we were both dissolving into giggles at the bad-romance-movie sexiness, and it was kind of sloppy. He kissed me on the forehead instead, and I nuzzled against him.

“I love you, Alex,” he whispered.

I looked up at him again. “I love you, too,” I replied, and we kissed properly that time.

“Hi, kids,” Ben said. “Alex! You’re glowing.”

  


  


“I’m sorry to have to tell you,” Ben said in the same hectoring tone of voice Tory politicians use when they’re explaining that there aren’t any hospital beds left because they’ve all been sold to Richard Branson and that’s poor people’s fault somehow, “you messed up your makeup.”

I frowned. Ben had sat me back down at the little desk and almost immediately started working on me with the remover pads. “I thought I did okay,” I said, trying not to sound disappointed.

“Oh, no,” Ben said, “you did _fine._ But I still have to fix it because _after_ you did fine you let that one over there kiss your lipstick all over your face.”

That One Over There paused in doing his tie long enough to say, “Hey!”

“Congratulations, by the way,” Ben said, smiling. “I was wondering when you’d get over yourselves.”

“Oi!” I said, and kicked him. I was still in bare feet, so mostly I only hurt my toes. “Don’t reduce my voyage of personal discovery to ‘getting over myself’.”

Ben trapped me with a look. “That first night? The first time you saw each other? I knew more or less how this was going to turn out. The rest of it is just… details.”

“Oh, uh, yeah,” I said, “speaking of details. And please don’t say, ‘I told you so,’ or anything like that, okay?” Ben just looked at me; I couldn’t meet his eyes. “I’m transgender. I’m going to transition.”

He sat back. “Thank. Fucking. God.”

“You knew that, too?” James said, sitting on the edge of the bed. “Why didn’t you tell me? Or _her?_ ”

“I knew _something_ was up,” Ben said to James. He looked back at me. “No straight cis man wears a dress as well _and_ as calmly as you did. But I didn’t know if you were gay, trans, secretly into crossdressing… And I didn’t _tell_ either of you—” he waggled a finger at James, “—because you can’t rush this kind of stuff. I might have chased her right back into the closet. Would Wednesday’s Alex have responded well to me asking if she was a trans woman?”

“Wednesday’s Alex was full of shit,” I said. “So no, probably not.”

“Well then.”

That sentiment earned Ben a hug, but I was worried I’d mess up my makeup again, so I settled for smiling and blowing him a kiss.

  


  


Emily linked up with us in the lobby while we waited for our Uber, saving me from the conversation Ben and James were having about me. I caught her eye as she emerged from the elevator, and found us a quiet corner together. I had to unlink my arm from James’ to get away; I prayed to any gods who might be paying attention I’d managed to do so before she noticed. I wasn’t sure I was ready for the conversation it might prompt.

“So,” Emily said, gathering her long coat around her so it hid most of the bright blue MCAC dress from view, “ _that’s_ new.”

Damn. I felt my whole body blush again. “Yeah,” I said sheepishly. “We kind of got together last night.” I was jealous of Emily’s coat; I’d forgotten mine, and between my dress and my blush I was easily the most brightly-coloured thing in the lobby.

“ _Really?_ ” Emily said, putting her whole body into that one word. “Bit of a turnaround for Miss ‘I’m not into guys’. How was it?”

I couldn’t suppress my smile. “He came up to my room last night in a bit of a state, and found me _also_ in a bit of a state. We talked it over, decided that, yes, we were into each other and we were both idiots for running away from it, especially me, and he… stayed the night. We didn’t actually do anything until this morning.”

Thinking back on it, it was hard not to melt. No-one else had ever made me feel a fraction as energised; no-one else had ever made me feel so _hungry_ for them. Just thinking about his naked body made me ache to put my hands on him again… I started to stiffen in my underwear, and quickly changed the subject.

“But that’s not what I wanted to talk to you about,” I continued. “Are you still interested in coming to work with us, as an engineer? We’re going to need good ones more than ever if this new contract comes through for us.”

Her face lit up. We spent the rest of the wait for the Uber discussing the sort of work she’d be getting involved in, the NDA she’d have to sign, the length and nature of the trial period, and whether or not James was likely to hit on her, too (I reassured her, probably not).

As if summoned by name, James appeared. He put his arms around me from behind and I sank into him, squeezing his arms around my belly, which pulled the already-snug fabric of the dress tighter, which pulled on the hip pads, which pulled on the tucking knickers, and what I’m getting at here is he started a chain reaction inside me, and I had to put a stop to it before I ripped his clothes off right there in the lobby.

I pushed his arms away, twirled around to face him, and nipped up to kiss him on the lips before he could register his surprise.

“Hello,” he said, when I released him.

“Hi,” I said.

“Good morning,” Emily said, reminding us both of her presence.

“Whoops,” I mouthed to James, and turned around to smile an apology at Emily. She winked at me.

“What I came to say,” James said, sounding a little flustered, “is the car is here.”

  


  


Between the four of us we were too many for the back of the car, so we banished James to the passenger seat. I, as the shortest, naturally got put in the middle, crammed in between Ben and Emily and thoroughly uncomfortable. I pulled the lap-belt as loosely over myself as I could; I still hadn’t quite recovered from my bout of James-related lust in the lobby. I’d have to be more careful about that, at least until I learned a bit more self-control. I finally understood why some of my friends had seemed so uncontrollably horny earlier in our teen years; I’d been nonplussed at the time, but it turned out I was just as bad as them once I met someone who flipped all my switches. Shame it had to finally happen for me while I was supposed to be a professional adult.

I thought of unsexy things. Self-control sucked.

“Miss Swan,” James said from the front seat, “did I overhear Miss Brewer discussing the arrangements for next week with you?” Great. I was ‘Miss Brewer’ again; James was clearly in a cheeky mood.

“You did,” Emily replied. “I’m looking forward to—”

She was interrupted by a strange, tortured rumbling sound, which after a few moments resolved into an unmistakably gastric growl. We all identified the source at roughly the same time and turned as one to look at Ben.

“Sorry,” Ben said. “I missed breakfast.”

My belly, reminded of the existence of food, echoed his. “Same here,” I said.

“ _You_ didn’t miss breakfast, Alex,” James said, turning around to blast me with a grin. I wasn’t sure exactly what he meant until Ben leaned forward and clipped him round the ear.

“Behave,” Ben said.

“She had quite the—” James managed before Ben hit him again.

I hugged myself and blushed. Emily nudged me and asked in a loud whisper if I wanted her to take James out to the back of the expo and shoot him, which prompted a round of protests from James and more violence from Ben.

The Uber driver took our bullshit in companionable silence, but rolled her eyes sympathetically when she saw me looking at her in the rear-view mirror. I rolled mine in response, and gave her five stars and a very large tip.

  


  


Sunday at our booth was characterised by short periods of intense activity interspersed with long periods of boredom, like a war but with slightly sillier outfits. The expo was winding down, with most of the journalists and reps already having succumbed to the weight of booze and takeaway food they’d consumed over the long weekend.

“So, did you really go down on him?” Emily asked me, between groups of attendees. 

“I didn’t _mean_ to,” I said, looking at the floor. “I was just kind of, you know, swept up in the moment. We were kissing and I suddenly wanted to take it further.” I smiled. “I liked making him happy.”

“You’re glowing, you know.”

“I know,” I said wretchedly. “Ben already tortured me with that.”

“It’s adorable.”

“It’s all the embarrassment. I swear I’ve blushed more in the last week than I have the entire rest of my life. It doesn’t help that teasing me is apparently James’ mission in life.”

“Are you two officially together now? Like, a couple?”

“I think so,” I said, frowning. I was pretty sure we were. We hadn’t actually _said_ we were going to be boyfriend and girlfriend — wow, that was a strange word to apply to myself; the latest of many — but it had been implied in the strongest terms. “It’s not been said out loud,” I added. “But he said he loved me.” At that, my apparent outer glow was joined by an inner one.

“That sounds pretty certain, then,” Emily said, giving me a quick one-armed hug. “Welcome to dating men!” She held up a warning finger. “Expect aggravation.”

I shrugged. “I’ll just kick him every time he’s a jerk until he gets the message.”

She grinned. “He’s looking at you, by the way.”

I turned around, and he was. He was on the phone, and waved me over as soon as he saw I was facing him.

“Can you talk to Soph?” he said, when I arrived.

“Why?” I said warily, but he didn’t reply, just wordlessly held out his phone. I took it. “Sophie?”

“ _Alex!_ ” she shrieked, mercifully moderated by the phone’s speaker. “James told me _everything!_ ”

“How much of everything?” I leaned on James; he put his arm around my shoulder.

“You two had _sex!_ ” she yelled, in a voice so loud it was slightly clipped by the limited dynamic range of the signal.

I sighed. James had probably heard that. “Yes, we did,” I said. James squeezed me; I appreciated it.

“That’s wonderful!” she enthused. “So does that mean you’re going to, um, transition?”

“I think I already have,” I said. “But yes—” I looked around to make sure I wasn’t likely to be overheard by anyone who didn’t know my secret, “—I’ll be doing all the medical stuff and everything. And before you ask, I’m not going to break his heart, Sophie. Not unless he breaks mine, first.” I looked up at James and he made very reassuring facial expressions down at me.

“Good. Now, I wanted to ask you something.” Oh God. “I’d like to get to know you properly, if you’re going to be my cousin-in-law. Cousin-in-law? Is that the term? Anyway. I wanted your permission to come stay a while, down in London.”

I blinked. “Oh, uh, sure, I suppose, if James agrees, too.”

“I do,” James whispered.

“Don’t worry,” Sophie said, “I’ll get a hotel. I’m sure you two will want your privacy.”

I hadn’t thought my blush could get any deeper, but it turned out that repeatedly talking to people about my sex life could manage it. You could have fried a whole breakfast on me.

“Um, thank you,” I said.

“What are you going to do about James’ family?” Sophie asked. “They’ve already met you as, um, ‘boy Alex’.”

“Fuck,” I said. “One crisis at a time, maybe?” James frowned. I mouthed ‘family’ at him, and he grimaced.

“Sorry!” she said quickly. “Yes, of course. James never sees his dad unless his dad imposes on him, anyway, and I can’t imagine his mum will mind.”

“Oh God,” I realised. “I’m going to have to figure out what to tell _my_ family.” This is what living in a strange, Birmingham-based alternate universe for a few days does to you: you forget about all the little inconveniences of life, like a mother who might object to you growing breasts.

James kissed me on the top of my head. It was still ridiculous he could do that even with me in heels.

“If there’s anything I can do, let me know,” she said, apparently sincerely.

“Moral support,” I said firmly. “Just… be present when I have to see people for the first time, so it’s not just me and James?”

“I’m at your disposal. Oops, must go!” she added. “I have to see a lady about a thing before I leave Birmingham.”

The line went dead before I could say goodbye. My shoulders sagged with released tension; even on the phone, Sophie was a bit much. I gave James his phone back and slumped against him.

“What am I going to do about my family, James?” I whispered into his shoulder. The thought was getting more intimidating the longer it lingered in my brain.

“We’ll work it out together,” he said, and kissed me. “Do you need to take a break?”

I shook myself. “No,” I said. “I’m okay. And I’ll _be_ okay.”

“Good,” he said, and kissed me again. “And sorry about before, in the car. I’m just a little giddy, that’s all.”

I smiled at that. “I am, too,” I said. “And you don’t need to apologise. I can cope with a little teasing, as long as you understand that next time you crack a joke at my expense I’ll kick you in the knee.”

“Understood.”

  


  


By the end of the day I was so tired I could barely stand. The three days of the expo, the swept-off-my-feet madness before it, and all the sudden changes I’d undergone had all formed into a gigantic weight that was pressing down on me, and I wanted to sleep for a hundred years. Preferably next to James.

I leaned against him as we watched Kit, Mark and Ben take the stand apart. Emily, looking almost as tired as I felt, was slumped on a stool next to Kristen and Maria and three women Emily knew who’d been working at a booth on the other side of the hall. They were sharing the last of Emily’s jelly babies and various other small treats, and between them they’d dumped a pile of discarded shoes like a funeral pyre. Kristen saw me looking and smiled. I gave her a little wave.

I’d kept my own shoes on, uncomfortable though they were after so many hours on my feet; I needed them so I could lean on James and not end up with my face in his armpit.

Despite my exhaustion, I felt at peace. I’d met myself for the first time, really gotten to know myself, filled in all the missing parts of my personal jigsaw puzzle. Sure, I had a journey in front of me, and quite a long one, but I had people who had promised to help me, I had a boyfriend who drove me crazy (in several different ways) and, most importantly, I finally had a map.

“Weird weekend, really,” James said. He was slowly stroking my bare shoulder with his fingers.

“You know,” I said, “I thought if the expo went really well for us, if we found a big buyer for our software, there was a possibility this weekend could change my life. I never expected… this.”

“You’re happy, though, right?” James said.

I squeezed him. “Happier than I’ve ever been.”

“Good.”

We watched the boys continue to dismantle the stand.

“You’ll come with me to the doctor, won’t you?” I said.

“Of course,” James said. “I want to share this whole process with you. I mean, not to the point of joining in, but—”

I laughed. “You’d better not,” I said. I didn’t like the idea of James becoming a girl. I wanted him to stay exactly the way he was. Except perhaps with fewer clothes on.

I felt him take a deep breath. “So,” he said, “when we get back to London, do you want to come back to my place?”

“Sure,” I said. There was nothing I wanted at my flat, anyway; just a cold, empty bed, drawers full of clothes I no longer needed, a life I no longer wanted.

“I mean, do you want to come back to my place to stay?” he said, with an embarrassed little cough. “I can, uh, clear out some space in my wardrobe and everything.”

I leaned away from him so I could look him in the eye.

“James Ian McCain,” I said. “Are you asking me to move in with you?”

He looked away, at the empty spot where our booth had been, where Ben and Kit and Mark were dragging boxes of equipment out towards the doors, chatting, laughing.

“I mean, if you want to,” he said awkwardly. “Do you want to?”

I stood on tip-toes, my heels popping out of my shoes, and whispered in his ear, “Yes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Phew! This chapter took the longest of all. Again, I've just been very sleepy.
> 
> Thanks for all your comments. It's been fun to write again.


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